Stepper Motor steps and other questions

Good afternoon all,

I have been reading the posts for a few weeks now and am interested in cnc stuff for two things.

One is I would like to build an x y z router table for my shop. Hopefully something about 4' x 4' to cut out wood parts and to make signs etc. I think the information I have seen on the list will provide for doing this one.

The other is I have a task of converting a Navy Dead Reckoning Tracer table (DRT) from stepping motors and gear trains to stepper motors. The gearing would be removed and the stepper motors would drive the leadscrews directly. The leadscrews are 10 TPI. My questions are, does a stepper motor make one step for each input pulse? Can a computer output the pulses from the parallel port fast enough to make it run at a rate of 2000 pulses a second? I will probably have to run windows NT as an operating system. I see that most stepper motors make 200 steps per revolution so I can calculate that. The nice thing about the DRT is Ieverything is relative. I don't need to know where the "bug" is, just make it move the correct direction and distance following ship movement. The bug is manually positioned initially and when it reaches the limits of travel. I don't know how much torque is required to turn the screw but without the gearing I don't expect too much. I am thinking of using nema 23 or 34 motors. I also don't quite understand the high voltage I have seen mentioned. I was under the impression that the motors ran on 5 or 12 volts, although I would like to run the motors at 28 volts since I have those supplies available.

I hope this isn't too far off topic. I am researching information for both setups at the same time.

Thanks in advance,
Russ
Pensacola, Fl
n4ft@...


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