USB Breakout Board vs. Parallel

[dwwright]

Any one using a USB breakout board? I see that Mach2 supports USB, but haven't done much research on it. Would USB be faster than parallel? I found a controller board at http://www.phidgetsusa.com or http://www.phidgets.com for $79 and they have code available for development. Just wondering if it would be worth investing in. I've been coding a controller and could look at using USB. Let me know your thoughts...Thanks

Darren

[ger21]

You can't use a USB breakout board with Mach2. Mach2 I *think* supports usb joysticks. Art's also adding support for some other type of I/O boards, possibly USB, not sure.
Mach2 has a USB mode for running the Gecko G2002 pulse generator. But you can't send your step and direction signals through USB. Parallel port only.

[akb1212]

So can anyone inform me of what breakout boards are supported?
And is there support for breakout boards that increases the capabilities of Mach 2/3 to more than 45kHz. I have the Universal Stepper card from www.picosystems.com. With EMC and the USC I'm able to set my 5-phase steppers to 1/10th stepping (giving 5000 steps/rev and I have 5mm/rev ball screws) and still achieve more than 2500 mm/min. That is about 41 kHz step frequency. That is not even remotely possible with the max available clock rate in Mach2/3.......

I have not found any info about supported hardware clock generators like this. Is there no such supported hardware? If not I'll have to abandon Mach 2/3 and stick with EMC.

Anders

[ger21]

Originally Posted by akb1212 I have not found any info about supported hardware clock generators like this. Is there no such supported hardware? If not I'll have to abandon Mach 2/3 and stick with EMC. Anders

Mach3 can do 45Khz step rate, but not in Demo mode (25Khz max for demo)
The only currently supported step generator is the Gecko G100 (4Mhz x 6 axis), and it will only be supported with Mach4, which is under development. An alpha version is available at www.machsupport.com