Re: minimilltask V/S bridgeporttask

[Jon Elson <jmelson-at-artsci.wustl.edu>]

Fred Proctor wrote:

> We are planning on upgrading our Bridgeport to have a speed-controlled
> spindle, so at some point we'll resurrect minimilltask/io and call it
> something different.

Ahh, wonderful.  I have a variable speed drive that takes 0-10 V (unipolar)
signals for speed control.  So, when you are working on this, please think
about a .ini file parameter so that the speed can be made unipolar, and
the direction set with the forward and reverse bits.  Looking forward to this!

> The new controller will be able to do rigid
> tapping, we hope.

Will this be assuming a full servo positioning drive, or just a variable speed
drive?  I guess if the acceleration of the axis is ramped up somewhat
slowly, that would work fine for rigid tapping.  Just need to keep the
acceleration
gradual enough so that the quill advance can stay tightly in sync with it.

This, of course, is also very much like the stuff needed to do threading
on the lathe, too.

By the way, is there any indication why the 15-Mar-2000 release under
the 2.0.36 kernel (and TkEMC) was unreliable?  I'm not the only one
who had this experience on systems that ran earlier releases reliably.

Thanks for all he good work,

Jon