I have been struggling for years to understand the  Enhanced Machine Controller
based on Linux.

http://www.rotaryeng.net/Nc-Mill-How-To.html

I finally lucked out.

I put the words "Servo Dynamics" (make of my old Kasuga CNC amps) in the
Thunderbird search engine EMC folders and wonder of wonders I found the
combination to the safe that held the EMC secrets  in the  hundreds
of EMC of emails  I have collected :-)

<http://jmcolee.com/CNC/SD-1525.pdf>

Its the amp model I have A servo Dynamics model 1525-BR

I down loaded the pdf. I now have a whole bunch of information I did not have
before.

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The entire Linux EMC world is based on a relatively low cost plug in card made
 by Mesa Electronics in Northern California.

http://mesanet.com/    called the 5i20.

This card is a Field Programmable Gate Array.

What that is is thousands of solid state switches combined to form devices.
Hundreds of devices... AND, OR, NAND, INVERTER, Counters, or complete computers, you
name it, many are possible. Just about any chip you can buy and some you can't buy.

By combing these switches in configurations. This is done with a FPGA programmer.

It is just a program. The actual programming (hardware) is on the 5i20.

You tell it what you want by feeding the program a list and it make the part or
many parts all connected together. The list is a simple text file called a script.
Your can edit it using any text editor.

Basically it is building a custom NC Controller based on the equipment you may have
like amps, motors, decoders, keyboards, limit switches, VGA displays,  ect, ect, ect..
There may be  hundreds of possible variations and combinations.

All this runs on a PC running Linux. You can access the Internet with this
computer and upgrade all the software for free. You can have your
CNC machine playing Maria Callas while it is making parts :-)

Frankly this makes a lot of sense as NC equipment tends to get
obsolete rather rapidly. The advancement in solid state switches is
a good example of this. Better amps, motors  and other power devices are
coming out daily. CNC machines are the closest you can come to a machine
that prints money :-) If you know how to build them you are already rich.
Think of the Hass F1 team spending 800 million U.S.  a year on racing cars.

Simple but I never saw or read such a simple explanation.
The computer science people on EMC make a lot of assumptions. Like everybody
automatically knows what a FPGA is and how it works and why you need it.

Paul Lamar


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