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WALLACE06/12/2011 21:09:42
304 forum posts
17 photos

Too late now as you've gone down the stepper motor route - But - I've often wondered about using a flexble drive for the table on my mill. The cheap and cheerful flexible drill 'shafts' you can get have a yard or so of cable just waiting to be used - although possibly with a worm drive as a high torque load may end up twisting it into knots !
 
You could run it off the end of the existing leadscrew although it would have to double back on itself..
 
Just a thought . .
 
W.
ady07/12/2011 00:23:15
612 forum posts
50 photos
I tried a cheap version of those flexi drill cables to run a light milling spindle and the wire failed at the chuck end after a couple of days.
 
They are fine for very light drilling work though.
Douglas Johnston07/12/2011 09:54:48
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814 forum posts
36 photos
I tried to program some pic chips a while ago and found the learning curve too steep and gave up. Recently however I discovered the picaxe website and find this system much more user friendly for non experts. Arc Euro in the UK do quite a good range of stepper motors and controllers.
Doug.
Stub Mandrel08/12/2011 18:46:15
avatar
4318 forum posts
291 photos
1 articles
I will get pic-axed to death for this, but if you want to program microcontolers yourself, the 8-bit Atmel AVR chips are very user friendly, though not as easy as the BASIC based approaches.
 
Neil
Skarven08/12/2011 19:41:23
avatar
93 forum posts
11 photos
I have programmed both PIC, Atmel and several other microcontrollers, and I agree with Neil. Atmel is much easier to program than the PICs. You also get a good free C-compiler for the Atmels, an for most people learning to program in C is a lot quicker.
Hugh Gilhespie08/12/2011 21:19:36
130 forum posts
45 photos
I used a PIC simply because I happened to have one - that and a complete ignorance of what was involved. Having got a bit further down the road I think Neil & Skarven are right, to get where I want to I should have started from a different place. Still, it is proving a very interesting journey and I am getting close to an exciting bit - hooking up the stepper motor and optimistically seeing it rotate, realistically trying to work out why it isn't rotating.
 
The Amtel chips do look nice though!
 
Regards, Hugh
ady09/12/2011 05:35:59
612 forum posts
50 photos
I got here backwards
It was my interest with hobby programming which led me to CNC...and then on to lathe work.
 
This is a program which will show you
BASIC counting to 9,999,999
ASM counting to 999,999,999
 
The difference in raw power is mind boggling
BBC Basic for windows is the only "easy" programming language I know of which allows you to put machine code instructions into a higher level language
 
this is the code:
 
-----------------------------------
REM count to a billion

DIM P% 70
A%=1
[
mov eax,1
.addup
inc eax
cmp eax,999999999
jb addup
ret
]


PRINT "ASM is counting to 999,999,999"
PRINT ~ USR(addup)
PRINT "Finished"

A%=1
B%=0
PRINT "Basic is counting to 9,999,999"
10
B%=B%+A%
IF B% < 9999999 THEN GOTO 10
PRINT "Finished"

---------------------------------
 
You can download the compiled program here.
I'm just an enthusiastic amateur btw, groping in the dark, so don't get too technical if there are any questions
 
 
The choice is quite stark
If you need raw number crunching power and pure speed then you really have no choice because ASM can count to a billion up to 100 times faster than BASIC can count to 10 million.
 
In this example program BASIC is only doing 1% of the work that ASM has achieved


Edited By ady on 09/12/2011 05:57:33

ady09/12/2011 06:34:36
612 forum posts
50 photos
The other problem is memory space in small chips
 
The ASM program is only around 200 bytes
 
The Windows executable is 82000 bytes
 

Edited By ady on 09/12/2011 06:37:45

Andrew Johnston09/12/2011 10:48:51
avatar
7061 forum posts
719 photos
Personally I don't like PIC micros. When they first came out they were pretty innovative in terms of size and simplicity. But the company seems to have lost its way a bit. I've found that the software and programming tools are a bit flaky - no use in the professional environment. There also seem to be a few quirks within the processors, which require workarounds. On the plus side the company does an interesting range of competively priced analogue and interface components; and it's easy to buy direct from them.
 
I've never used the Atmel processors, but they do look good. Unfortunately most of my work these days requires processors with rather more grunt. Mind you that has a downside; the user guide for the processor on my latest project is 3600 pages long. It'll take nearly a week to read it, let alone understand it and extract the important hardware points. Plus of course the datasheet and all the application notes on how to actually use the #*& thing and have a fighting chance of it working.
 
Regards,
 
Andrew
Stub Mandrel09/12/2011 20:12:01
avatar
4318 forum posts
291 photos
1 articles
BBC Basic for Windows is available as a free trial version that will do 101 useful things for the model engineer. I bought the full version, which brings free upgrades for ever. It'sbrilliant.
 
Just to show off a bit- I've nearly comleted an AVR-based 8-bit microcomputer with 128K of RAM. It runs my own flavour of BBC BASIC with full floating point, procedures and functions, graphics etc. in 28-bit colour on a QVGA LCD screen. the keyboard is from an Amstrad emailer. I still have to add the file system, probably using an SD card based system.
 
The pictures are of the second prototype, vesrion 1 was 64x128 mono display, the new one is all SMT and has much more memory and features..
 
Neil
 



Billy Mills09/12/2011 23:34:35
377 forum posts
Neil, Thanks for the BBC Basic for Windows link, downloaded the free demo version and carried on writing BBC Basic as if it was 25 years ago! Always liked BBC Basic but running on a PC is quite a revalation! That's a very nice tip off, thanks again! Will definitely get the full version.
Would agree with the PIC v AVR comments, the AVR is far more polished and quick. The upper level devices are very capable and nibble at the micro controller definition, they are far more than that.
 
Welcome back Michael!
 
Billy.
 

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