High speed profiling and cpu speed

I was wondering what people's experience was with processor speed versus
profiling speed. I am running EMC which has a nice constant speed contouring
feature, G64, on a plasma cutter. When cutting artistic shapes (line
segments in the .020 to .050 long) the motion is jerky because the cpu
cannot make the necessary calculations fast enough. I have to slow the
federate down to about 10 to 20 in/min to get the motion smooth with a 266
MHz Pentium. My system uses stepper motors, 2000 (x10 micro steps) per inch,
and I am running freqmod. How fast of a processor is needed to cut artistic
shapes up to say 100 in/min? Anyone have experience with plasma cutters, EMC
and shape cutting?

Terry


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