Re: Re: Newbie trying to help others make sense of it all

Karl

Nice post of the basics which I shamelessly snipped but plan to add parts
of to the handbook at linuxcnc.org.

From: Karl Peterson <karlos@...>

<s>

>I am stymied on the encoders. I have seen pictures about
>home built ones with Parts from US Digital, but they don't
>make sense to me. I cannot visualize how they attach to the
>table and provide position data and cannot see how to put
>them on my little hunk of iron.

I've seen and heard about dozens of ways using wire, fishing line, toothed
belts and such that run alongside each axis but for my money/time I'd go
for ball screws with rotary encoders. I used the 5/8 stuff from McMaster
and found about 0.004 backlash with single nuts. Zero lash with Roland's
approach using tapered spring washers between two.

Since you have the steppers, drivers, dro board, and an understanding of
what the EMC is, the only thing that you are missing for full cnc
operation is a good way to turn rotary motion into linear motion for each
axis.

BTW - The smdromod.o compile problem has been fixed. And you can use lead-
screw error compensation if you have an accurate way to measure it.

HTH

Ray