Pick up winder ideas

[enkindler]

Arduino's are fun, I use their bootloader a lot for projects but just buy raw chip for projects now but I also have a PCB router.

I actually have been thinking about this a bit today, the reprap firmware should be usable with little to no change.

The reprap printer has an extruder which is "distance" based in the firmware so G00E1 where E is the extruder axis would move 1 "unit" that being mm in the 3D printing world but could be a revolution if you calibrated it that way.

the problem is that it wouldn't have support for G33 and G34 or the more complex look ahead codes.

Here is the firmware I use, you may want to look at it just for the improved IO handling they have look at the fastio.h

https://github.com/kliment/Sprinter

I'll start another thread about using EMC2/Mach3 I think it could be very very interesting.

[Rj777]

cheers, Yeah they are good fun but its a very steep learning curve and there seems to be 100 ways to do the same thing. I plan to do the same as you and just use the chip in another pcb but my pcb mill is yet another unfinished project.

I think this is how I can quickly get over the limitations of the AVR by using one for process control and another for motor/feed back etc.


Unfortunately that firm ware doesn't work with e new Arduino v1. I look forwars to seing the Mach 3 thread. Can you now use USB on a laptop or dose it still need a PC and LPT port?

[Rj777]

Thanks for for the nudge enkindler, whilst I haven't looked at the reprap printer it reminded me of normal printers and the encoder strips they use. I have just managed to rewire an old inkjet and I'm getting approx 0.04mm/step resolution from the linear encoder strip (need to rebuild the slides as there is so much play in a printer head, 0.042mm is about right for a a 600 LPI strip)

This seems very promising for the traverse as AWG 42 is 0.06mm ish and if I can sort the PID on the servomotor it should be able to move a fast as hand winding for a really wild scatter but with the precision of a low geared stepper on Acme thread.

The Arduino seems quite happy with this as well and is very repeatable using the end stops so no sights of missed steps, not sure if its capable of doing any thing else whilst monitoring at this speed tho.

H bridge for the motor next, then PID..........Small steps