[cncadmin]

Wow, I've been looking at the new G200x coming out and it's quite impressive.

[ViperTX]

Well...I certainly want to get all excited about this until it hits the store shelves. I wonder if the encoder inputs are differential?

[Mariss Freimanis]

The encoder inputs are single-ended. There are not enough terminal connections available for differential inputs and everything else as well (96 terminal connections).

Mariss

[cncadmin]

When will this be available?

[Mariss Freimanis]

Shooting for sometime in April. Pre-production boards are running right now.

Mariss

[Evodyne]

Mariss,

April? Right around the corner! What is there in "pre-release" documentation floating around and when will your site be updated? I'm curious to learn more-including pricing.

As long as I have you for a second or two, I've got some of your G210's and I love them. Thanks for a wonderful product.

Lance

[turmite]

Hey Mariss,

Would you be so kind and to tell us (me again) how fast you have spun a stepper using one of these. You told me on the ph one time and I am afraid to repeat it for fear of getting (flame2) ! Btw I was talking with Art this week and am patiently waiting till everything is in place and then I order!

Mike

[Mariss Freimanis]

It's not the controller, it's the drive that gets mind-bending RPMs from a motor.

The G200X has a maximum step rate of 4,194,304 step pulses per second. Seems like a lot but what if you are using a 250 microsteps / step drive? That step frequency will get you almost 84 revolutions per second or a little over 5,000 RPM.

We test each G201 to see it reaches 6,000 RPM on the test stand motor. We spec the drives at a 200kHz max step pulse frequency. Each has to demonstrate it can get there. A tricked-up G201 can spin the motor to over 10,000 RPM.

The fastest I've ever spun a step motor? A little over 100,000 RPM. A number of years ago Portescap was pushing a ceramic disc rotor step motor. I think it was called "Disc-motor" or something. The motor had very low inductance and rotor inertia, allowing it to easily rev to high speeds.

I was curious to see just how high so I went for it. The motor disintegrated (as in pieces flew all over) past 100,000 RPM. I didn't get the exact speed because it seriously distracted me. Later I worked out the tangential velocity on the edge of the disc and it came to a little over 1,100 feet per second; by curious coincidence that is the speed of sound at sea-level.

The rotor may have been destroyed by shock waves as it exceeded Mach 1. Or it could have been centripital forces, who knows. Either way, I'm not trying that experiment again; the explosive destruction and resulting shrapnel was a sobering lesson.

I still like to think I took a stepper supersonic though. :-)

Mariss

[HomeCNC]

Mariss, At the high RPM of your bench test of 6000. Does the stepper loose all strength? I would think that at that speed you could stop it with your fingers, if it did'nt burn you first

[skippy]

And Mariss' competitors at the time anounced "STEPPER DESTROYED BY MACH1" which I guess is true depending on which Mach1 we're talking about (product or speed of sound)
Skippy

[Mariss Freimanis]

A stepper is pretty much useless at 6,000 RPM. Torque falls of as the inverse of speed, meaning it would still have the same power at 6,000 RPM as it does at 600 RPM. In reality it doesn't because detent torque is always present and always a loss.

Let's say a motor has 100 in-oz of torque at 600 RPM (44.4 Watts). Ideally it would have 10 in-oz torque at 6,000 RPM (still 44.4 Watts). Now let's take a real motor that has 8 in-oz of detent torque. At 600 RPM detent torque loss is 3.5W, leaving 40.9W available at the motor shaft. At 6,000 RPM detent torque loss is 35W, leaving only 9.4W available to do work (2 in-oz).

The motor will stall at 7498 RPM no-load. (RPM = Watts * 1351 / in-oz) or (RPM = 44.4W * 1351 / 8 in-oz).

Mariss

[Mariss Freimanis]

And Mariss' competitors at the time anounced "STEPPER DESTROYED BY MACH1" which I guess is true depending on which Mach1 we're talking about (product or speed of sound)
Skippy

It was actually all young Art's fault. As a result he quietly abandoned Mach 1 and later went on to fame and fortune with Mach 2 and Mach 3.

Mariss

[broncosis]

hey looks like another great
piece I'm just courus if there is any news
its now may and no sign on the website
I'm stocked to pic up one and a set of drives

[ger21]

It's been renamed. Quoting Mariss from the CAD-CAM Yahoo group. (a couple days ago). I think you might have to wait awhile for software to be able to use it with. A version of Mach3 for it (Mach4) is a few months away at least.

We will be launching 5 new products over the
next 30 days:

1) G202: Like a G201 but needs no heatsink or 470uF/100V cap and has
short-circuit protection and power-on reset. May 25.

2) G212: Like a G210 with the features of (1).

3) G100: The G2002 motion controller is renamed. 6 axies of
step/direction (4MHz), 6 axies of quadrature encoder inputs including
index (1MHz), 22 general-purpose filtered and protected inputs, 16
general-purpose 100mA, 24VDC relay-rated outputs, 4 digital to analog 0-
5V outputs, 4 analog to digital 0-5V inputs, USB and/or ethernet ports,
96 position terminal blocks, 70 LED I/O indicators, anodised enclosure,
2.5" W by 7.5" L by 1.5" H, etc.

4) G101: Same as (3) but no enclosure, terminal blocks or LEDs. IDE
cable headers for all I/O, 2" by 4.5" board, under $200.

5) G204V: The vampire drive. Every protection circuit, low motor
dissipation.

Other, more exciting things are in the works for later.

About our numbering system:

G100-series: Motion controllers
G200-series: Step motor drives
G300-series: DC brush-type servo drives
G400-series: 3-phase brushless servo drives
G500 thru G800-series: TBD
G900-series: Miscellaneous products

Mariss

[broncosis]

I'm interested int he 3 phase servo
controllers as well that is very sweet

I need to get more parts together yet to build my
own machine I have been building for work for so long now
but now that there will be a complete solution
from Geko I may finaaly be able to get them away from the
other stuff we have been using

[yukonho]

Um, at the risk of sounding ignorant (which in this case, I am), is a motion controller kind of a combination break-out board/stepper (or servo) drive/etc.?
Sorry, this is new to me. Can someone explain just what this thing does? (in plain terms)
Oh, and one more thing, is this thing for steppers, servos or both, or am I completely missing the point?
thanks
colin

[ViperTX]

Basically a motion controller does stuff like all the interpolation (you know how to get from one point to another), it takes in encoder feedback to verify where it's at for each axis,..etc. I suspect that Gecko is responding to the need for a psuedo closed-loop system with their motion controller offering.

[ger21]

Um, at the risk of sounding ignorant (which in this case, I am), is a motion controller kind of a combination break-out board/stepper (or servo) drive/etc.?
Sorry, this is new to me. Can someone explain just what this thing does? (in plain terms)
Oh, and one more thing, is this thing for steppers, servos or both, or am I completely missing the point?
thanks
colin

Instead of Mach2 sending the step and direction signals, Mach2 sends the info to the motion controller, and the motion controller sends the step and direction signals to the drives. Much faster and smoother than Mach2 can. Up to 4 million steps per second per axis. It will work with either steppers or servos.

[Art Fenerty]

Hi All:

Just thought Id fill you in on Mach's plans for the G100 and whats been done to date.

Special Firmware has been written for Mach4 and the G100 that will allow it to connect via TCP to your computer. It basically plugs into the hub in your house or your network card. The G100 can be set to its own IP address within your network automatically.

From there, a special version of Mach IV (Industrial Version or 4 depending on how you read it..) is being written. It uses no printer port driver and is a normal windows application so it wont stress the slowest of XP computers. This will allow 4Mhz stepper/servo pulse outputs. As in Mach3, handwheels will be permitted and many features that Mach3 could not do will, in the end be done under the Mach4. It will hopefully, in the end be a closed loop system for servos or steppers with encoders. It has 22 inputs and 16 outputs. 4 analogue ins and outs. It will be capable of using PLC's for logic at the same time. It will be able to home to an index pulse for exact positioning, jog via several input devices as in Mach3. The capabilities of the G100 will tend to amaze those who havent seen one run. A new definition of smooth is in order for this puppy. The speed is very fast to ridiculous depending on your requirements.

Still early in development, I hate to promise vapourware, so I'll try to keep you up to date on progress every once in a while. So far, the G100 is speaking to MachIV, the inputs and outputs are functional. Heartbeats are monitored and movement traffic work has begun. I cannot promise how long till MachIV is actually running a program on a G100, but it will hopefully be very soon. So far, all looks good. This G100 project is using the skills of a few people , both in development and in testing , and this shoudl hopefully push the envelope of development time to a speedy completion rather than waiting just on my rather slow at times release schedule.

I see quite a few questions on the G100 these days, so I thought Id post this info packet to help clear up the mystery. For those wondering exactly what it is...

The G100 basically replaces your printer port for the connection to your CNC machine. Its job is to take inputs, put out oputputs and pulse your motors step/dir lines.. Of course, if your gonna replace the port, why not enhance it. And the G100 delivers on that enhancement. Four analogue voltages from 0 to 5 volts can be output. Same with 4 inputs to MachIV. You have 22 inputs. 16 outputs. For encoders, you have up to 6 allowed. MachIV will use 2 of those for handwheel MPG's as in Mach3. Marris is working on enhacements like unstallable stepper control for the G100, so we'll see if that can be intergrated in. Constant Velocity will be through the Moving Average conceived by Marris at GeckoDrives. This is a very smooth concatenation of lines to create a smooth contour. The G100 will have variable moving average which can be tuned depending on the end feedrate. When CV rounding is an issue, the MAvg can bve reduced by the user to allow for CV with less rounding. Arc's are 6 axis interpolated as cubic splines, for full feedrate control of 6 axis with no linear/rotary type of calculations as in the past.
Probing will be possible in 6 axis at once, so digitizing will become smarter and easier.

Well, when its ready I'll let you know, just figured you might ike an updated explaination of the MachIV integration...

(If you havent seen the new wizards to become available, check out the ones from Brian Barker at www.newfangledsolutions.com , they too, will be a part of MachIV when its final release hits.. (MachIV will only be available from newfangledsoltions when its released...and is meant to be an industrial solution)..

Thanks,
Art
www.artofcnc.ca

[JFettig]

Art, that sounds like great progress. Will MachIV be an upgrade from mach2/3 for free like the rest of them?

Also, what happened to the USB interface? I was under the impression that it was going with USB rather than TCP. TCP sounds quite good actually, this means I could controll my cnc from anywhere in the house. Would there be a problem using wireless communications between the computer and G100?

I think the unstallable stepper enhancement would be great! I dont know how it would work, maybe detecting when its about to stall and slowing it down or stopping it, just a guess.

Keep us posted!

Jon