PC Serial Port Stepper Motor Interface Card substitute 1

[windell747]

Aloha,

Ocean Controls offer the PC Serial Port Stepper Motor Interface Card which would suit my needs perfectly, but since they are located in a non-US country it will be hard for me to obtain a purchase order.

Do any of you know of a US made substitute?

Here is the link:

http://www.oceancontrols.com.au/motor_controller/stepper_motor_controllers.htm

I'm wanting to purchase a device that is sold in the US that has the same functinality/similar functionality as the this card. I've done google searches, but I only recieve packages that recieve serial input and output the leads for the motor.

This card takes input from the RS232 serial port of a PC and converts the ascii commands into step and direction signals. These signals can then be fed to stepper drivers.

It is important for me to have the controller (step & direction) be separate from the drivers because these two devices will be located on two oposite sides of a copper wall and the least amount of leads penetrating the wall is prefered. So there would only be 4 or 5 leads penetrating the wall if I were to use this card.

Mahalo

 

[itsmoked]

Have you done the obligatory web search cuz there are a ZILLION serial controlled stepper controllers...?

 

[windell747]

Yes, I've done a lot of web searching for serial controlled stepper controllers. I would not have not submitted a question without searching first.

What all the serial controllers have in common is a serial input and stepper outputs that connect directly with the stepper. Basically the stepper cotnroller and driver are already combined. This isn't what im looking for.

I'm looking for a stepper controller that recieves input from the PC's serial port and outputs step and direction signals that can be sent to a stepper driver. I already have stepper drivers.

It is my goal to place the stepper controller and stepper drivers on opposite sides of the copper wall. This way I will only need to feed 4 or 5 TTL lines through the wall, instead of a serial line or 12 lead wires for the 2 motors.

By what I have seen so far, the type of controllers the output step and direction signals are less common. The only one that I found is made by Ocean Controls. Unfortunately, Ocean controls is part of another country, so my supervisor is having me find a US made substitute that will be easier to get a purchase order for.

 

[itsmoked]

Oh kay doa Kay;

Check these out.

http://www.machinetoolcamp.com/motion_control.htm

http://www.kellyware.com/max_stepper/max_stepper.shtml

http://www.simplestep.com/products/sscbgecko.html

http://www.simplestep.com/products/ssxygecko.html

 

[windell747]

Thank you very much itsmoked! These are exactly what im looking for. Any there any others? How did you find these?

Some of them required windows. unfortunately I cannot use windows. I'll be using a C program to write ASCII command to the Linux PC's serial port. Thank you again!

 

[itsmoked]

windell747; Sorry for the dela this post got tagged as read by me...

I was looking for stepper drive controllers to run a CNC router and stumbled across these in the past. There are several lists that are around that list oh 2 dozen drive and controller makers in the machine tool realm if you can find one of those lists they are useful in hunting controls.

The reason you have such a small selection is because machine tools are the serious driver of these types of controls and of course the software is the biggest headache. All the good/cheap/free machine tool software out there is designed to run using PC parallel ports. This is because all of the software generates an axis single step and once the feedback encoder responds that a step has occured the next step is sent. This would be a real pain in the rear using conventional serial links. Hence few serial controllers are born.

Yes there are others but I would have to ferret them out of the WEB just like you are going too.. ;}