[CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] BDI with DRO/Encoder Board

To Jon Elson ( & ALL):

Just trying to document my experience so others may benefit. Well I found out that my DRO board was faulty. There are two pretty sophisticated 24 bit dual axis quadrature counter chips (The LS7266R1 from LSI Computer Systems). It seems that I have destroyed the chip that handles Z and A. During testing the wires got knocked and I also popped the Y channel destroying the second chip. The problem lies in that there is no mounting hardware and the board sits loose in the slot and easily knocked around if not careful. This chips are $16.55 a piece. Oh well.

I compiled the latest version from linuxcnc.org. dro.h and dro.c had to be updated from the latest fixes at sourceforge. The install script is much improved and made life much easier. Running with smdromod.o is much slower than using the original BDI code. I am not sure what the problem is. It is really unusable when using the tk interface. The xwin interface is somewhat better and the mouse somewhat follows your hand movement. I did compare the .ini files and the timing parameters were the same. Could be compile optimizations but have not looked into it.

Our machinist and I will be using the computer control for the first time tomorrow. We went over the interface together today and it seems pretty simple.

Finally since I can't use smdromod.o for week what is the best motordriver to use for my appication? Is it stepmod.o or freqmod.o? I have seen the new ppm code that you wrote at sourceforge (pulse position modulation?). Should we give that a go?

Thanks

David Kryskowski
Ann Arbor Sensor Systems, LLC


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