I've been running a Boss 5 from my pc for over a year now. I use
Deskcnc, which seems to do a great job of running the mill, but I
don't use it much for programming. I've got gecko 201s and they
drive the stock stepper motors pretty well.
Now that i've said it can be done, I have a question for everyone
else. One problem I've had recently is the Z axis stepper keeps
losing steps. I wrote about a month ago and said it was losing
power (by the way thanks to all who replied, I don't get on here
very often), but a few changes in my acceleration profile, and it
seems to run pretty fast again. However all the adjustments I make
don't seem to fix the step loss problem. It doesn't lose them all
the time either. I'm running a 3d profiling program with about
65,000 lines of code, with the top of the part at Z0, and the bottom
at Z-.150. By the end of the program its usually off by about .050"
but sometimes as much as .200". Also this motor seems a lot hotter
than the Y and X motors, although they are all the same kind of
motor.
I'm considering changing to servos, but don't have any experience
with them. Would I be able to change just the Z axis to a servo and
geck0 3whatever, and leave steppers on x and y? I found what looks
like a good deal on www.homeshopcnc.com and would like to know if
this servo would drive this machine.
thanks
Nathan Clymer
