Here goes nothing:
Background:
I run a (very) small electronics company and we use several mills running TurboCNC. It works great but we need to run faster, better (closed loop servo) and not rely upon ancient operating systems and PC's. I love the TurboCNC interface simplicity. I've tried MACH but really had enough of printer interfaces. I like the look of the Gecko controller but still feel this isn't quite what I want.
Low Cost Controller:
So I've designed a small controller board and PC based program (written in Liberty Basic so works with Vista/XP (and Macs in future)). The controller has a DSP and FPGA on-board and communicates via a low-speed optocoupled serial port (RS232) - the prototypes actually have a USB port on them with a built in USB-RS232 converter IC.
The controller currently drives 3 sets of step/dir ports (although we will add at least one more) and has a bunch of I/O for control, analog output voltages for speed control, encoder pulse counters, jogwheel interfaces, estops, limit & datum switches, etc...
There is no (practical) limit on the max/min pulse rate we can generate and the controller handles nearly everything without PC intervention (the PC sends very simple commands to the controller - not far short of pure G-code).
The aim is to be able to run the mill very robustly (all safety, tool & machine paramaters settings, etc... are stored on the controller boards; so can use any PC in the office. Just dowload the code from the website, take a single USB lead from the PC to the controller board and mill away - our test record is under 5 mins from download to milling (on a pre-configured controller board).
Proposal:
If we can get enough initial interest ([email protected]) then we will 'productionize' our code and hardware and make it available (late Dec).
At present the thought is that we sell the controller board fully built-up/tested and give the PC software away free (or at minimal charge), this allows us to add more functions and sortout any software/firmware bugs. Estimate the controller board to be $150-$200 and available worldwide.