Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Smart/Dumb box again...

Brian Walsh wrote:

> Do you have a spec of what the chip does and how to apply it? Is the item
> available to purchase?

It is not a standard part just for this purpose. It is an FPGA (Xilinx XCS10 series)
programmed with logic I designed. It has an interface to accept IEEE-1284
parallel printer handshaking, and 2 axes of 24-bit counters that produce step
pulses with a granularity of 100 nS, which is more than almost anyone would need.
Only 2 axes of the rate generator circuit will fit in the XCS10 size chip, so I'm
rethinking whether to reduce the time resolution or go to a bigger chip, like the
XCS30 or thereabouts. This also needs a counter to keep track of position
either directly counting step pulses or by connecting an encoder to the stepper.
This is somewhat a conceptual thing right now, anyway. I intend to make something
available for this in a while. One option is to put the counter and the rate
generator plus some digital I/O logic all in one big FPGA chip, and put it
all on one big board. This would hopefully accomodate 4 axes of both the
rate generator and the counter. I'm hoping this could be made as a product
for somewhere in the neighborhood of $200, but it seems that once you get
into one of these things, the price always goes up. All those small components
just keep adding up!

Jon