RE: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Black box again

Gentlemen
I am playing around with the 'black box' idea using an ActiveWire
board from http://www.activewireinc.com/ as the black box. This uses the
USB port and provides 16 bits of input/output. The board contains a EZ-USB
chip. This chip contains the USB communications and a super 8051
microcontroller. The nice thing about the EZ-USB chip from Cypress
Semiconductors is that the 8051 program is downloaded from the host to the
chip when the USB cable is plugged in. No prom burning etc. Currently I have
the PC talking to the board, a demo 8051 program going though the Keil
Compiler and lots of ideas. My aim is to just have the 'black box' handle
timing. Let the PC calculate the step/direction/time-between-steps and shoot
this information down to the ActiveWire board, letting the USB Fifo buffer
take care of bursts of data. The Activewire board then just has to keep
track of the timing. and output the step and direction pulses based on the
time-between-steps index calculated by the PC.

Side note: This experiment was kicked off by discussion of USB use on this
list last Winter. As some one has said, to many ideas, too little time.

Dennis


-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Eldredge [mailto:harmonyt@...]
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 11:52 AM
To: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Black box again


Gentlemen,

Some time ago we were discussing the "black boxes", Pic controllers etc. I
haven't heard much from the guys who said they are working on these lately.
I think there is still interest in having a "black box" that one could
serially send motion commands to, which would do some spooling of the serial
commands (enough that the black box could smoothly output the step and
direction pulses in real time). This would free our PC's to do other control
functions. Such boxes would only need (in my opinion) to be able to to the
above, and to be able to be called (interrupted) to a controlled stop during
a move. If a move was interrupted, the black box would report back to the
control which move was interrupted. The control could then use encoder feed
back to decide what to do after any interrupted motion. I know there are
some IC's out there which will do part of this. I would like to see some
black box capable of handling a move of about + - 320,000 steps in one move,
in order to give a resolution of a tenth of a thousanths of an inch, and 32
inches in any one direction from a zero point. I think this would cover the
distances most of us would need to cover in our lathes or mills.

I think the serial port is going to be with us for a long while.

Some time ago, I programmed a Basic stamp (SX) to do most of this, but it
was too slow and was limited to 32,000 steps. It would also be possible, in
my opinion to do the proportional math with the PC for the various axi
involved in a particular move, and the command could include specifications
on whether the controller should accelerate and/or decelerate the moves to
relieve the black box from having to make this decision.

I am also aware that this is exactly what LP indexer does through software,
but I consider that an expensive proprietary alternative. I also own a copy
of LP indexer, which I am not using at this time. I would like the hardware
alternative better. Microkenetics used to say they were planning to have a
product like this, but I gave up waiting on them.

Is there anything seriously missing in this "wish list?"

Update anyone?

Thanks,

Tom Eldredge


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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