Re: OpenCNC???

> From: George Potter <gpotter@...>
> I just received a "bingo card" from a company that has a product
> they are calling OpenCNC (registered trade mark) ..... they claim
> a software based CNC ..... no proprietary hardware, no motion
> control cards.

When they say, "no proprietary hardware, no motion control cards" they don't
mean no hardware at all. Like the EMC, they do all the math inside the PC,
but they still need D/A converters and quadrature encoder interfaces (or a
SERCOS interface) to connect the servo amps and encoders to the PC. I know
one card they use is this:

http://www.vigilanttech.com/

These cards are a little more expensive than Servotogo, but cheap compared to
a DSP type card like a Delta Tau or Galil.

> Does anyone know what this product is?, do they have any good
> ideas that we can steal (used loosely) to get EMC away from the
> servo to go card? or is it just hot air.

The path to a cheaper solution than Servotogo lies in developing a "hobbiest"
version. I think the Kulaga/Mauch DRO board with D/As added along with maybe
a watchdog timer is within our grasp.

> They have a web page http://www.mdsi2.com that has a bunch of
> hype, but very little concrete information. (kind of like a "engineering
> design guide" that I received from a company making a "software
> modem", all potential, not a single solid bit of design information).

These guys are worthy of respect. They've been in the CNC business from the
beginning on the programming side and have contributed greatly to the state
of the art. OpenCNC is a really nice system, but it's rather expensive. I
don't know for sure, but I expect it's more than $10k.

Matt