Originally Posted by
biederboat
1. Two-axis motion control that is primarily used to "get to an approximate area" either through a program or manual use of a joystick.
2. Once you're at an area, the motors need to be moved "manually" (with hand-cranks). The stepper motors would have to turn independently of their resolution (i.e go between pulses). So, is that even possible? Would the motors have to be turned off or somehow decoupled?
[When the motors are powered up but stationary, you can't crank the cranks and move them. That's when steppers have their maximum torque.]
3. Once you're done looking at an area you'd like to hit a "go" button and tell the system to move to the next position where you would do additional manual moves.
[What sort of manual moves did you want to do? What makes you think that would be more accurate than simply commanding the moves in software?]
4. For "one-time" (e.g. prototype) parts, we'd like to use a joystick to control the motors and travel around the part.
[You can do that, but it works just the opposite of how you seem to think it does. You can use manual jogging to get most of the way there, but for fine control you'd want to use the stepper drivers and software.]
The main point here is that stepper motors just don't have the resolution for the details in our parts; they would be fine to get to an area but then you'd have to move manually.
[I have a hard time believing that. What sort of resolution are you talking about?]
The current system does have hand-cranks on the back of the motors but the rest of the system is so old and unsupported we want to chuck it and add new motors & control system. Hopefully I've clarified that correctly.
Thanks for any feedback,
BB