[kmmatney]

I have been looking at using a KFlop controller for our systems at my company. We currently have up to 17 stepper motors on some our systems. Since a current KFlop board can only handle up to 8 stepper motors, can I control another set of 8 motors on another KFlop card (plus KSteps) connected to the computer? I would just like to know if the USB driver can support that. It it can do that, then the KFlop might work for us. The only other factor we don't like about the KFlop is that we often use microstepping greater than 16x, so if there is any way to increase that, that would be useful (although maybe not necessary, as I really don't know how much we benefit by going above 16x).

[TomKerekes]

Hi kmmatney,

Our libraries support multiple KFLOP boards based on USB Location IDs. They are designed to be fully Multi-board/Multi-process/Multi-Thread. Our KMotionCNC App is limited to one KFLOP. With our KMotion.exe configuration App you can run multiple copies simultaneously and have each connect to a different board. See:
Multiple Boards

So to make use of multiple boards you would likely need to write your own App.

Not many Users are using multiple boards (if any) so I would expect there to be some unresolved bugs or issues. We would certainly work to resolve any that come up. If you give it a try and it doesn't work out you may return any boards for a full refund. The axis on different boards would not be synchronized except through the PC which is not real-time so you would need to determine if that is acceptable for your application.

KSTEP has microstepping fixed at 16X. Usually higher resolution may improve low speed smoothness but usually will not improve accuracy. If you need higher microstepping you would need to use other 3rd party drives.

Regards

[kmmatney]

Thanks for the response. I figured I would have to write software for controlling the motors, but that's OK, and that's what I'd have to do anyways to integrate the KFlop to the rest of our system. I will see if I can purchase a KFlop + KStep + SnapAmp (we also have servo motors) for evaluation.