[R.thayer]

I would like to know if I can use emc2 with encoder feedback. If so can anyone tell me more about how it work and what hardware I will need. If Emc2 does not then does anyone know of any other cnc control softare that does. Please explain as much as you can or point me in the right direction.

[samco]

What are your plans? Emc2 can do encoder feedback for servos.. It can do it for stepping motors but only for e-stopping if the steppers loose it (following error).

Could you give us more information on what your trying to do?

[andy55]

to read encoders at a reasonable rate, you will need some servo-hardware (pci-card, or parallell port based cards)
the supported hardware, along with approximate prices, is listed in the emc wiki:

http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emc...orted_Hardware

[R.thayer]

I would like to use emc2 with two servo motors. I would like to convert a manual 9x20 lathe to cnc control. I have a small desk top machine that I retrofitted with stepper but I would like to know try it this servos on a larger machine. Any ideas or thoughts would be great. I am also looking to build my own servo drives so that if anything happens down the road I can fix it myself. Please let me know what you think. Thank you

[andy55]

Please let me know what you think. Thank you

- get ballscrews right away, don't mess with acme/trapezoidal screws

- get brush DC servos, if you are not very good at electronics and microcontrollers then an AC servodrive is too hard.

- Get someone with a lot of experience in (power)electronics to help you. Build a simple H-bridge that can be driven by PWM+DIR signals, and publish it GPL. That way others with a m5i20 or pico-systems board will be able to use it.

[samco]

You could look over my thread
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25929

I have not had time to work on it as we are in the proccess of selling/buying a house - but it is similar to what you want to do.

So far it has been working great testing. It is using pwm+pwm instead of pwm+dir but either way. I have purchased a pluto board for $60 - which one of the emc2 developers has programed a 4 axis servo/encoder + some i/o.

http://axis.unpythonic.net/01167750885
http://emergent.unpy.net/01166412010

sam