[Mariss Freimanis]

Hugo, JRoque,

Note to myself; never post anything on a Friday nite you'd be embarrassed to read Saturday morning.:-) I am and I apologize to everyone here for it. It clearly is not an issue of politeness as I wrongly implied.

My dad was from Riga, my mom was from Sabile. Both wound up in Germany after WWII as DPs (Displaced Persons) and I was born there. We came to the US when I was 5. I started 1st grade without speaking a word of English; after one year I could cuss fluently. At home we spoke Latvian so I maintained that fluency as well.

I am writing a "Step Motor Applications" paper as time allows; it will picks up where the "Step Motor Basics" white-paper left off. I hope it will be helpful when it's finished.

Hugo; your English is far better than my Spanish. I'm honored you consider me a freind.

JRoque; did you use the 40-meter or 80-meter band for that? Tell your freind "Lab dien, ka tev iet?" (Hello, how are you?); that should blow his socks off. Pronunciation is completely phonetic.

Mariss

[hugo carradini]

Hello Mariss.
I was sure . You are a great guy. I hope i can count on you for my questions and doubts in the near future.
Regards
Hugo Carradini

[JRoque]

Hey Mariss, no worries man. You do still have a good point and it's to our best interest to dual language the posts. Good deal on your paper. When you're done, we can translate it to Spanish for you so you can go global with it.

BTW, I hadn't noticed the mention of your name in a previous post. I'll let Arturo speak to the rest but here's roughly what he was saying:

"[the 'C1' breakout board] has buffers on it's inputs and outputs with 24mA per channel. This is what's required by Geckos due to the optos it uses. Plenty people work with the parallel port's 10mA without apparent issues. However, Mariss pulled my ears when I went to market with my first board since it had 16mA output and Geckos can't work with that current."

Yep, I'd be worried too if I come across a post in Latvian that mentions my name.

On the ham radio contact, surprisingly, they were on 10m and 15m. The 15m band is my favorite since it's wide and less prone to interference from others.

Hey Hugo, I didn't know you spoke English that well either : - ) Dejanos saber cuando te llegue la T30 y montes todo. Para estar seguro, yo esperaria por la tarjeta de Arturo ya que esta completamente aislada. [[Let us know when you get the T30 and have everything setup. To be sure, I'd wait for Arturo's board since it's completly isolated]]

JR

[Mariss Freimanis]

The reason for 16mA is the opto-isolators we use (HCPL-2531) are fast but have low gain (collector current vs. LED current). The minimum guaranteed is 15%, typical is 30% while maximum gain may be as high as 50%.

The opto collector current load is 2mA which makes the worst-case LED current just over 13.3 mA (Ta = 70C, Vcc = 4.5V, 15% gain part).

Trouble starts when you look at the "typical" and "maximum" specs. The result is most drives work satisfactorily with 6.6 mA while the best will work with only 4 mA. This is the reason some people get away with using 74HC or 74LS logic series drivers. They get away with it until they run into an opto that is near the minimum spec.

By the way; I can heartily recommend Arturo's breakout board for use with our drives. It is a well-designed board.

10m and 15m ??? It must have been during daylight hours or meteor-skip conditions I'm guessing.

Mariss

[JRoque]

Mariss, would a Schmitt-trigger with a low threshold correct any slow ramp up time on the opto LED? Sorry I haven't read the HCPL-2531 datasheet yet. Not sure if anyone makes a highspeed opto with a configurable Schmitt-trigger output. Then again there's always common mode noise that might obviate a low volt input trigger.

Agreed on the CNC4PC boards. I'm not a user (yet) but they look solid.

Yes, both contacts around 16:00 GMT and atypical conditions - especially on 10m.

Mandatory Spanish post - repeat after me: "El burrito is to go, por favor."

JR

[Mariss Freimanis]

A Schmitt trigger works; anything to square-up the rise/fall times. All signals carry some noise, a slow ramp + noise = multiple logic threshold transitions.

Make that "Huevos con chile verde" and I'm sold.

Mariss

[hugo carradini]

Hola JR
Estoy manejando el programa de Mach3 (recien baje la licencia) y al principio en la pagina de diagnosticos el Time In Interrrup funcionaba y se mantenia en los margenes pero al rato pase por alli nuevamente y esta sin movimiento en +0.0 ¿Tienes alguna idea porque esta asi?
Gracias
Hugo

[JRoque]

Hey Hugo, no tengo idea de que sea eso pero en mi caso tambien dice 0.0. Eso lo puedes preguntar en el forum de Mach.

[[no idea what that could be but in my case, it also says 0.0. You can ask that in the Mach forum]]

JR

[hugo carradini]

Hi JR
When things get stuff for me i will write in Spanish because i need to be understood correctly and i think better in mi own language when i am nervous.
Art is a great guy and help me fix the problem. My motor just arrived and i am like a kid with a new toy. The LapTop has not been sheep yet. I never asked and i ended in this tread because the spanic stuff. ¿What type of machine you run? Any way i considerate you my friend and i hope you don't mind if i come here with my questions.
Regards to all the community.
Hugo Carradini.

[arturod]

Mariss,

Thanks for your comments. You know I really appreciate the comments and suggestions you have given me. From our last I changed the way the way the buffers work. The new batch that is coming out will have an additional ACT IC to ensure that they are never used to more than 50% of their max current load ratings. I will send you samples of this board as of a new multifunction board that should be coming out in about 3 weeks.

Arturo Duncan