[hackish]

I have a set of Panasonic Minas A4 servo amplifiers and motors. I've managed to wire them up and sending pulses, get the motor to rotate. They have encoders built in. I want to use these to control a CnC mill conversion. (PM-25V mill).

The trouble is, I'm missing a part of the puzzle. I thought I needed to buy mach 4, but it is a piece of software, and I still need something that can output the signals to the servo controllers to make the motors go...

The Minas unit takes direction and pulses, but it seems that I need an additional piece of hardware to interpret the commands from the cam software to actually make the motors go to a specific x,y,z location.

What piece do I need?

[ger21]

You need a Mach4 compatible motion controller.
Several different companies make them.

PMDX.COM - Products for CNC and motion control applications
https://www.warp9td.com/index.php/products
HiCON Integra - Step and Direction 6 Axis Mach3 Mach4 Ethernet Motion Controller, CNC Retrofit, Machine Tools
https://www.poscope.com/product/pokeys57cnc/
CNC MOTION CONTROL SYSTEM (CSMIO products, sets) Archives - CS-Lab
http://www.cncdrive.com/UC300ETH.html

[hackish]

Ok, so is it fair then to say that mach4 is the G-Code interpreter which then talks to the motion control hardware? Which part of the system controls things like ramping up the speed of travel and such? Obviously, if you're operating 2 motors at the same time you need each to be coordinated.

[ger21]

Mach4 does all the trajectory planning, and sends low level commands to the motion controller.
The exception is backlash compensation, which is handled by the controller.

Note that not all Mach4 controllers currently support all of Mach4's features, so check with the manufacturer.

[hackish]

Thanks for all the info. I think I may go with the acorn system since it's a single source and appears to be more appropriate for my needs.