Replace Omniturn control w/EMC2, anyone done this?

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13 Sep 2010 20:49 #4180 by janders1957
I just installed EMC2 off the Live CD and am studying and reading up toward finally making the move away from Ahha Artisan on my CNC mill.
I'm sure to have questions on that front soon, but skimming through the manual on lathe functions and seeing a video or two on Youtube had me wondering about replacing the Omniturn control on my lathe with EMC. The Omni control working through a dedicated motion control card is very very fast over short moves, and is really pretty easy to program and use. BUT, like Ahha, it's showing it's age somewhat with respect to running under DOS.
The mobo that came with it would not recognize a HDD but I found one on ebay a couple years ago that did. That board died and I'm back to the OEM board. Suitable 486 mobos (needing an ISA slot in a particular location) have become rather expensive on ebay these days.

It would be nice if I could set up another EMC box to run it, and have networking and USB support.
I know EMC can drive the servo amps, but wonder how much if any performance hit I might take with respect to rapids. I might be a one-man garage shop, but I am full time self employed, this is for making money, not hobby. So speed is something of a factor.
If anyone has done it, are there any other issues?

Thanks,

Jon

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13 Sep 2010 21:26 #4181 by andypugh
janders1957 wrote:

I know EMC can drive the servo amps, but wonder how much if any performance hit I might take with respect to rapids.


If it is a servo machine, and you keep the same amps then the rapid speed should be exactly the same (possibly faster, given that EMC has a pretty advanced PID component)

What is it that makes you expect EMC2 to be slower?

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13 Sep 2010 21:49 #4183 by janders1957
andypugh wrote:

If it is a servo machine, and you keep the same amps then the rapid speed should be exactly the same (possibly faster, given that EMC has a pretty advanced PID component)

What is it that makes you expect EMC2 to be slower?[/quote]

Great, would love to keep the speed!
As for asking, just have zero experience with EMC. My Omniturn is the only servo driven machine I have, I am aware that dedicated motion control cards make high speeds easy. Just wasn't sure I could really match that without the specialized hardware. The YouTube videos I watched were probably stepper systems.

Thank you,

Jon

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13 Sep 2010 22:18 #4185 by andypugh
janders1957 wrote:

As for asking, just have zero experience with EMC. My Omniturn is the only servo driven machine I have, I am aware that dedicated motion control cards make high speeds easy.


With a servo machine it is the servos and amps which define the speed. (As far as I know).
Bear in mind that you will probably need some different dedicated cards to control the lathe. You can run a servo system using a parallel port and some minimal PWM to voltage components (a resistor and capacitor per amp) but it I don't think it is recommended.

For an approximately turnkey solution look at:
www.mesanet.com (7i43 or 5i20, and then probably a 7i33)
or
pico-systems.com/motion.html

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