CNC to driver board communication

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26 Aug 2010 11:45 #3880 by bengineer
Hello All,
What started as an attempt to save some cash has ballooned into an exercise in a deeper understanding of the CNC machine (and electronics in general). I'm trying to develop my own motor controller board, and I've actually made more progress than I figured I ever would. Now I'm starting to think about integrating the motor controller(s) into an EMC PC, but I'm stumped. I need to figure out specifically what the EMC is sending the controller board, and after going over and over the Integrators Manual, I've come up empty handed. I'm specifically looking for finding out what format the EMC is sending to the board (Serial data?), what specific commands (velocity and time? accel and time?), and anything else I might not even be thinking of currently (like does/can the board send data to the EMC?); I've already discovered multiple variations of commands, even just for steppers. I'm currently working on developing a board for steppers with encoders, but I'm not ruling out servos.
Does anyone know where I can find this type of information?

Thanks!

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26 Aug 2010 23:29 #3893 by BigJohnT
There are no "communications" going on between EMC and stepper drivers. EMC only turns on and off the step and direction pins to move the axis/joint to the proper place based on the configuration and the G Code... it is that simple.

John

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27 Aug 2010 09:58 #3900 by andypugh
There are EMC2 interfaces that "communicate" with boards, but that is handled by separate driver modules (PPMC for the Pico boards, HM2_7i43 for the Mesa parallel boards, hm2_PCI for the Mesa PCI boards, etc.
These driver modules are loaded by the HAL file, they create pins in HAL to which the EMC2 pins are linked.
It is perfectly possible to create your own driver. it isn't necessarily even all that hard.

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27 Aug 2010 11:40 #3902 by bengineer
Thanks, I seem to be over complicating things in my head.
Also, I stumbled on the HAL User Manual yesterday and it cleared up quite a bit.

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