need to talk KNUCKELHEAD K2CNC

[GITRSTARTED]

would like to talk to someone about;1. which is better steppers or servos (isee where k2cnc uses both)? 2. what determines the size of the motor ie. size of machine, size of router, or what i want to cut? I do like the k2cnc 39"X25"X5" machine, and there is always a but the price is out of my league. But of course i'am a pretty good scavanger and from what i see on the k2cnc there is only 1 problem they dont list the model #'s of the motors so i can look for used, motors and drivers, they use on this model. Any help would be appreaciated; my email bbroughman2243@charter.net

[dp]

Just for grins I'd start with an old Hewlett-Packard pen plotter just to see what can be done with off the shelf stuff. The hard part is finding an HPGL-2 plotter driver for Winblows. I may have to relearn how to code HPGL.

I'm building an xy table from one but will obviously use larger steppers and proper buffer semiconductors to drive them. Mostly I'm just curious as to what kind of router table I can fab with it.

dp

[fixxit]

I have been looking for a HPGL-1 driver for windows xp, haven't found one that works.
Would appreciate any leads.

[Tony]

GITR'-
i'm afraid i'm just getting started with this stuff myself and probably wouldn't be much help. haven't even built anything yet.

from what i gather: get steppers not servos. then again, if youre scavanging, free is free.

i'm going to make up a rule of thumb here: if the motor weighs less than 5 pounds, its too small.

-tony

[ibewgypsie]

In AUtocad 9, (or maybe your program) click Plot to file. I forget the setup, it writes XPositions and YPositions to a file. easily ran by Turbocnc or other program.
www.dakeng.com (runs in dos)
Mach3 has a direct jpg/gcode converter.
www.artofcnc.com (Windows XP)
I have a working cnc program in Visual basic 6, it has the usual windows problems. I have posted it, gave it away here before. The timing subroutine liked to have kicked my butt. I work on it in spurts, last time was about six months ago. Attaining maximum acceleration without a exterior timing refrence is the killer. Windows has agendas all it's own. It'll accelerate fine three times then be writing to the hard drive (god knows what) and the drive overstep itself and just quiver and humm. Making a large man throw a temper tantrum like you never saw.
For as cheap as turbocnc and other Good cnc programs are, you can't take the time to write one.

David