Bridgeport Retrofit motion control?

[drumsticksplinter]

Correct But Why anyone would expect a £130 Control software using windows parallel port to be industrial strength is beyond me if I'm honest.!! . . . . Your simply being unrealistic in your expectations.!

I think you misunderstand, I'm not expecting the parallel port and mach3 configuration to be industrial strength because it obviously isn't. Conveniently though using a breakout board and parallel port provides a very quick and cheap means of testing the bare bones of a machine build and thats all I'd use it for.

I'm just looking for a good stable solution to a motion control system on my machine. The thing that has really put me off mach3 is the MPG feature, which is what i really want to work well, I've tested it with a pokeys board, which claimed to offer the feature, but the results were terrible. I've read about other people having serious issues with the MPG feature in mach3 too. No matter how much I ask about the functionality of mach3 with and MPG, nobody seems to be forthcoming with information, why is that? Because it doesn't work? Artsoft have said as much, thats why part of their selling point for mach 4 is "Higher quality manual pulse generator (MPG) = very smooth jogging and positioning without lag time.".

I was wondering if the MPG feature worked well with the ESS or CSlabs?

[komatias]

...Because it doesn't work? Artsoft have said as much, thats why part of their selling point for mach 4 is "Higher quality manual pulse generator (MPG) = very smooth jogging and positioning without lag time.".

I was wondering if the MPG feature worked well with the ESS or CSlabs?

Agreed to some extent. Linking the MPG directly to the LPT or other motion control many not yield totally reliable results. but then you can always go with the Vistacnc stuff like:




I will be evaluating this for my own purposes.

[drumsticksplinter]

but then you can always go with the Vistacnc stuff

I've admired the vistacnc pendants for a while now but haven't got round to ordering one to try. I'd be interested to see how they perform, though I wouldn't be surprised if it was something like the pokeys inside with a fancy plugin written around it....

[skunkworks]

I am very happy with jog performance in linuxcnc. On the k&t I use it all the time for setting parts/tools. (I use a 1/2 dowel pin and jog wheel for setting zero - rolling it between the part and tool)

http://linuxcnc.org/docs/html/examples/mpg.html

There are a bunch of ways to hook a physical jog encoder up. The above example is similar to how I have implemented it on my machines. That example is also a real time jog implementation.

[drumsticksplinter]

I am very happy with jog performance in linuxcnc. On the k&t I use it all the time for setting parts/tools. (I use a 1/2 dowel pin and jog wheel for setting zero - rolling it between the part and tool)

http://linuxcnc.org/docs/html/examples/mpg.html

There are a bunch of ways to hook a physical jog encoder up. The above example is similar to how I have implemented it on my machines. That example is also a real time jog implementation.

Thanks for all your input regarding Linuxcnc, I have decided to take the plunge and have ordered the mesa 5i25 and 7i76 kit, which should arrive to me next week sometime. I was really impressed with your machine setup, some complex stuff going on there for the toolchanger to work so well ;) Thanks also for the info on the MPG setup, the code doesn't mean a whole lot to me at the minute, but I'm sure I'll get my head around it!

I'm going to ditch out the windows install on my bridgeport pc and load up linux asap. I've been afraid of trying linuxcnc for a while and I'm sure I'm not the only 1 who'd consider it to be a move over to the darkside, but hey! it might turn out to be the best thing I've done

Its all still very daunting and I'm sure there is a learning curve, but from what I'm reading this seems the right decision for my machine at this time. I know there is always a linux vs mach3 battle going on as with the Windows vs Apple. I use a Mac 90% of the time btw

[JAZZCNC]

I was wondering if the MPG feature worked well with the ESS or CSlabs?

Can't speak for any other MPG on Mach but these but Cslabs MPG Module works perfectly.!

Pokeys is a toy in comparison to real motion control but to be fair I've setup a MPG with Pokeys and didn't have any issues. Thou in fairness I didn't push it or look for any issues and it was just a small lathe.

[drumsticksplinter]

Thanks for sharing your experiences with the MPG feature and the motion controllers. I really liked the look of the cslabs stuff and the add on modules seems like a nice feature. I was a bit reluctant to pay the price for the IP-S at this stage though and the IP-M won't do exactly what I require.