[HighTechRedNeck]

I am trying to build my own cnc electronics, I have been lurking on websites like this for a while trying to learn from other people as much as I can, since I know little about electronics. I have build my own stepper motor controller just to see it I could do it, and it works just like it is supposed to, but I do have some questions.

What is the purpose of the "enable"-signal ? Why would you not want to have the motor enabled during the cnc process ?

What is the maximum frequency used for cnc on the parallel port, I am guessing it is somewhere around 40kHz(?), if so, a 20 Mhz pic should still be able to run quite a few commands between pulses.. or not ?

Thanks

[sparkness]

Enable signal on a drive can be used to enable the motor or disable the motor for several reasons, such as emergency stop or manual use of the machine. max freq on the parallel port can be 100khz based on mach3 and windows, with DOS it can be higher.

sounds like you should download a copy of mach3 and dig in as that is an excellent and easy to understand machine control software.

[pminmo]

To get to 100khz you need a pretty fast computer.