Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] EMC: why do I have so many problems?

> 6: as the prospect of servos becomes greater, does it seem more
> logical to use step and dir outputs with a geckodrives or is there an
> advantage to using emc to monitor the encoder itself

You mentioned you had a 200 mhz computer, which is kind of slow to run
a stepper system as generating fast step rates creates a lot of
overhead. If you go to the Gecko servo drive get the one with the
step multiplier. Still you will have to choose an effective step size
that is no bigger than your desired positioning resolution, and that
may require you to still run at high step rates. EMC could be
rewritten to run the step/dir geckos a bit faster since they don't
care about nice regularly spaced pulses, but I don't think that's been
done and might not be easy.

However, the cheapest route would probably be to upgrade the computer
and buy the Gecko drives. You can get traditional servo amps of
course, but will need an analog output card.

> 8: if I get a servo system off ebay with a isa card is emc so
> customizable that i can point it to the specific adresses or does emc
> only work with some proprietary cards/systems ( this question is
> mainly for future full sized macine work )

If you are willing to learn about EMC, linux, and C programming you
can make it talk to any board for which you have or can figure out the
I/O map and jumper settings. Well, anything ISA at least... PCI stuff
or USB would put you on the bleeding edge. Oh, and anything with a
motion coprocessor of its own may be rather tricky to work with - you
would have to either rewrite the motion part of EMC to run on the
coprocessor, or more likley program the coprocessor to pass input and
output right through from the PC processor.

Chris