Re: servo driver on a chip ?

Here's another chip that was on our short list. We decided against it
because we like to write our own software. Supports DC servo,
brushless DC, microstepping and pulse & direction motors. Chip
variants from 1 to 4 axis. They have a stripped down model that only
does pulse/direction.

What attracted them to us was their electronic gearing support,
assigning one channel to change the gearing of another channel (this
is used in continuously variable transmissions/gearboxes).

http://www.pmdcorp.com/advanced-motion-control/advanced-motion-control.cfm

They also make PCI and ISA boards to save you the trouble of designing
your own. If you notice, they come with a software API and support any
amplifier you might have laying around. This is reasonably high-tech
stuff, supporting velocity profiles, S-curve, trapezoidal and whatnot.
I have no idea if Mach-3 supports this kind of thing, though, because
I'm using EMC2 (not for cost, but for hackability and Linux
compatibility.) You could use it with existing drives, like Geckos,
but that's kind of redundant because you don't need the PID controls
in the Gecko with this controller.

http://www.pmdcorp.com/motion-control-cards/

Oh, yeah, not cheap.

On 8/4/06, Alan Marconett <KM6VV@...> wrote:
> Hi Dave, Dennis,
>
> How about the PIC-SERVO?
>
> http://www.jrkerr.com/
>
> It has encoder and Hall-effect sensor inputs.
>
> HP had a motor control chip out a long time ago. HP1000?
>
> Alan KM6VV