Understanding hardware stepgens

I agree, Halscope has saved me on more than 1 occasion. But what will I expect to see if scoping say axis.N.cmd? I guess if I program a slow feed I will see the signal grow in amplitude as it "feeds" to the programmed destination? Since axis.N.cmd (I think) is the command for the next servo period, with the right feedrate it would look like a linear slope (assuming no accel/decel) to the destination.

btvpimill wrote:

I agree, Halscope has saved me on more than 1 occasion. But what will I expect to see if scoping say axis.N.cmd? I guess if I program a slow feed I will see the signal grow in amplitude as it "feeds" to the programmed destination? Since axis.N.cmd (I think) is the command for the next servo period, with the right feedrate it would look like a linear slope (assuming no accel/decel) to the destination.

If you have an encoder in the system, then you can probably get velocity and PID error, which
are VERY instructive in seeing how well the servo loop works. At least with our boards,
you can see the velocity and error even on an open-loop stepper system, so if there are
any anomalies in the movement, it will be quite visible.

Jon