Strategy

[Pierre Phe]

I am actually building a cnc table. I will be using servo and would like to build my own driver controller.

From here I have 2 choices.

1) From a cad to a cam to a program that manage stepper motor through parallel port where I can link my controller and have my controller make the servo motor acting like stepper.

2) From a cad to a cam, the resulting Gcode is transfers to my driver controller through the RS 232 port of the PC. The controller software is more complex than the first choice because it will be responsible to translate Gcode in movement of the servo.

Because of the controller facility, i like the second idea but i do not have any idea of what i am going in in translating Gcode in somethings that make sens.

Any help?

[HomeCNC]

I think you are confusing Stepper motors with Servo motors. You will not be about to get a servo motor to ACT like a stepper motor. At least I don't know of any way!!

[Zephrant]

Sure you can- Use a Gecko 320 or 340. They take step/direction input and drive a servo to match. Basically it is closed loop to the driver, but not to the computer. Nice in that it can't skip a step, and will shut-down if it gets too far away from where it thinks it should be.

Zeph

[HomeCNC]

No. He was talking building his own driver! I don't think you can build your own Servo driver as easy as a stepper driver. So this led me to think he is confused about stepper and servo's. Don't confuse him anymore

[Pierre Phe]

No, i was not confusing it.

I already have a microcontroller that i had hook up with 2 servos, on this side, everything seems fine.

I saw here some post stating that 99% of the hobby CNC software use parallel port.

Since i want to use my separate microcontroller to handle the servo, from here, I have the 2 choices mentionned.

1) My microcontroller is pretty dumb and spend most of the time reading the pc parallel port and move the 2 servos accordingly.

2) My microcontroller will act more intelligently and will store a Gcode interpreter. On the receiving of Gcode commands from the PC(cam) via RS-232, he will interprete those Gcode command and move the servo accordingly.

My set-up is actually a lot more interresting using the choice 2. But i do not want to spend 5 months programming the Gcode interpreter in my basement. Maybee for that reason the choice 1 is the one.

I hope this is more clear.

Pierre