Breakout Board

[croy]

It really is not hard to make a reliable breakout board. I designed/made some a few years ago with optoisolation on the I/O since it was before I got the isolated drivers. Simple to not have isolation one outputs...

How fast do you need the inputs?

still a little uncertain so advice will be grateful. from what i remember, parallel ports struggle much above around 330KHz. unless you know otherwise.

[Jonathan]

still a little uncertain so advice will be grateful. from what i remember, parallel ports struggle much above around 330KHz. unless you know otherwise.

Thinking about it Kernel speed in mach3 is generally 25kHz, some will run at 35kHz. So ideally you want a bit more than that ... there are plenty of opto-isolators available that run much much faster than that.

[croy]

My board will be ready in September, for those of you who are interested:

Features:
· Onboard high voltage regulator (70V Max)
· Dual power supplies;
o One 5V DC for the Parallel Port associated logiclevel circuitry.
o One isolated 12V DC to drive port-opto circuitry.
· Integrated Charge Pump for added protection, withoverride jumper for testing.
· Full optical isolation of all inputs.
· Buffered 2x relays, rated at 10 Amps 240V AC.
· The user will be able to select from a further combination of;
a) 2 out of 3 comprising 1x 10A relay, Charge pump and 0-10V for Spindlecontrol.
b) Channel Y Step and Dir or Y Step and Relay no4 (10A relay)
· Opto isolators can handle step signals up to 40 KHz

[Jonathan]

Good to see that you appear to be doing the isolation properly...more than can be said for some.

You could add an option for a different voltage range for spindle control.

40 kHz is a bit low. Most will only run at 25-35kHz with Mach3, but you can have more and a lot of drivers claim to do 200-300kHz.

[croy]

actually the components i have used are rated at 80kHz, i am just being cutious.

[John S]

40 kHz is a bit low. Most will only run at 25-35kHz with Mach3, but you can have more and a lot of drivers claim to do 200-300kHz.

The opto isolation is only on the inputs.
Driver outputs reply on the driver isolation

[Jonathan]

The opto isolation is only on the inputs.

Ok, didn't realise that as it wasn't stated in the info...40kHz is obviously plenty for the inputs.