Help needed to customize output of Mach3

[frenzal]

Hi. This is my first post her so I appologise in advance for any stupid questions but here goes:

I have an old cnc system that runs custom stepper motor controllers that DON'T use step and direction. Basically it uses 4 pins on the printer port to operate the 4 coils of each stepper motor (2.5 Axis). Is it possible to modify Mach3 to operate this? Has anyone done anything like this already?

I guess I could upgrade the electronics on this thing but I'd prefer to avoid that if possible. It got dragged out of the cupboard to do a job that was too small for my CNC router. At the moment it runs some very basic (read crap) software that I wrote in QBasic to draw and machine parts. I am currently using Mach3 on the router and would like to use it on this machine too.

Any help would be most appreciated!

[ger21]

Don't have Mach3 in front of me, but I think it does this. Sherline mode, maybe?

[frenzal]

Thanks for the response! I had a bit of a look into Sherline mode but from what I can gather it still uses the step and direction signals, but changes the geometry of the step pulse. I'll keep looking into it. Any ideas welcome!

[ger21]

My mistake. How about Max NC-10 wave drive?

[frenzal]

That looks quite promising! Thanks for you're help! I'll try that out tonight.