spank
Sun 16 June 2013, 11:54
Hey all, I've been hanging around this forum since the beginning, and I've always planned on building a Mechmate, and still will at some point!... but in the intervening time, I've built a couple of other machines and worked with a few different control options. The obvious two big ones were Mach 3 and Linux CNC (EMC2). My CNC partner and I used Linux CNC for a few years before switching over to Mach 3 after it just became a hassle to find hardware that would work without any issues with the Real Time processing of Linux CNC. I really like Linux CNC vs Mach as far as its interface goes, but Mach proved to be more reliable given our hardware in the end.
More recently I built a 2'x 4' machine with Vexta PK299 DBA motors, and I decided to go with Dynomotion Kflop for the control (http://dynomotion.com/). This is a dedicated control board that does not rely on the computer at all as far as sending a pulse chain to the drivers. You can run Steppers or Servos, 8 axis, and they make a bunch of peripheral boards that integrate with Kflop as well, including Kstep, which is a 4 axis Stepper driver board that can run up to 5amps per axis.
I just went with the Kflop, and I found some nice Centent CNO165 drives on Ebay for a very good price, but I know people that have gone with Kstep have been really happy. At any rate Kflop runs on C, which is intimidating to a lot of people, but the truth is I don't have any real experience with C programming at all, and I had it up and running in an afternoon after I had finished wiring up my control box. They make a plugin for Mach3 that allows people to use the Mach interface to run the Kflop board, although I think you lose the slick trajectory planning and motion algorithms built into Kmotion CNC when you do that. You do however take advantage of the clean/high volume pulse chain and real feedback loop. The motors run like silk with Kflop vs my experience with software based CNC control. I have NEVER lost a step, and it comes with its own simple CNC control software called KmotionCNC. Kflop is $249, which is quite reasonable given how solid it is and how configurable it is. What is really special about the board is that you can have a true closed loop stepper system if you attach linear scales or encoders to your machine. Depending on how you set it up, you can have the machine simply stop when steps are lost, or you can have it correct issues as it goes along (up to a point as far as how big the error is). This is something that typically costs thousands of dollars to achieve.
With the flexible C-based interface, you can really do anything you want with the board, and Tom, the guy behind all of this is incredibly responsive to questions and troubleshooting. There is a forum on CNCzone and also a Dynomotion Yahoo group that users and potential users post on, and Tom always responds within the day. That part of the whole deal is fantastic, and of course like I said, I really couldn't be happier with how smooth and reliable my machine is with this board.
It would be great to see some Mechmate users using Kflop. This forum is really the best CNC forum on the internet because everyone is dedicated to a common cause and improving upon that base. In that light I thought people here should be made aware of this terrific piece of hardware that truly ups the robustness of any machine that it is paired up with. I'm happy to answer any questions that I can should anyone have any.
Cheers,
Spank
More recently I built a 2'x 4' machine with Vexta PK299 DBA motors, and I decided to go with Dynomotion Kflop for the control (http://dynomotion.com/). This is a dedicated control board that does not rely on the computer at all as far as sending a pulse chain to the drivers. You can run Steppers or Servos, 8 axis, and they make a bunch of peripheral boards that integrate with Kflop as well, including Kstep, which is a 4 axis Stepper driver board that can run up to 5amps per axis.
I just went with the Kflop, and I found some nice Centent CNO165 drives on Ebay for a very good price, but I know people that have gone with Kstep have been really happy. At any rate Kflop runs on C, which is intimidating to a lot of people, but the truth is I don't have any real experience with C programming at all, and I had it up and running in an afternoon after I had finished wiring up my control box. They make a plugin for Mach3 that allows people to use the Mach interface to run the Kflop board, although I think you lose the slick trajectory planning and motion algorithms built into Kmotion CNC when you do that. You do however take advantage of the clean/high volume pulse chain and real feedback loop. The motors run like silk with Kflop vs my experience with software based CNC control. I have NEVER lost a step, and it comes with its own simple CNC control software called KmotionCNC. Kflop is $249, which is quite reasonable given how solid it is and how configurable it is. What is really special about the board is that you can have a true closed loop stepper system if you attach linear scales or encoders to your machine. Depending on how you set it up, you can have the machine simply stop when steps are lost, or you can have it correct issues as it goes along (up to a point as far as how big the error is). This is something that typically costs thousands of dollars to achieve.
With the flexible C-based interface, you can really do anything you want with the board, and Tom, the guy behind all of this is incredibly responsive to questions and troubleshooting. There is a forum on CNCzone and also a Dynomotion Yahoo group that users and potential users post on, and Tom always responds within the day. That part of the whole deal is fantastic, and of course like I said, I really couldn't be happier with how smooth and reliable my machine is with this board.
It would be great to see some Mechmate users using Kflop. This forum is really the best CNC forum on the internet because everyone is dedicated to a common cause and improving upon that base. In that light I thought people here should be made aware of this terrific piece of hardware that truly ups the robustness of any machine that it is paired up with. I'm happy to answer any questions that I can should anyone have any.
Cheers,
Spank