Re: Steppers

>Is there a mechanical way to trigger steppers? I was thinking about
>putting one on the down feed on my shaper and triggering it with a
>switch or something on the backstroke. Probably a stupid idea.

Quite the contrary, nothing stupid at all.

As the owner of a beloved shaper, I find your desire quite brilliant.

In fact, I'm 90% of the way through a conversion of my own, including
putting a stepper on the crossfeed, hence the brilliant statement <G>.

The secret here is to put some sort of switch or sensor on the ram
so that the stepper only moves when the shaper is not cutting.

I'll start by using a custom designed controller, but want to try using
CNCPro. You see, CNCPro has a pin that can be assigned a PAUSE function.

The plan here is to wire the above mentioned switch so that when the RAM
nears the work, the computer is put into PAUSE. While cutting, there
will be no stepper movement. At the end of the stroke, stepping resumes.

Alan

--

Alan Rothenbush | The Spartans do not ask the number of the
Academic Computing Services | enemy, only where they are.
Simon Fraser University |
Burnaby, B.C., Canada | Agix of Sparta