Author name: Jon Elson

Our PPMC board set is a flexible interface between the computer and up to 4 analog servo drives. It can be expanded to 8 or more axes, and additional boards can be added for more I/O points. This consists of a motherboard that connects to the computer’s parallel port and a card cage that houses […]

If you have a machine with resolvers on the axes, and you want to connect to a CNC control that accepts quadrature encoders, Pico Systems has a product that will do what you need. A resolver is a device that measures angle by varying magnetic coupling as the shaft rotates. It has to be excited

The Pico Systems Universal Stepper Controller is able to provide a better train of step pulses than can be achieved by software step generation. Using software through the parallel port of a PC computer, it is quite difficult to get good step timing above about 20,000 step pulses per second. Our Controller can easily deliver

I wanted a portable mill to demonstrate my CNC control hardware at shows like NAMES. I bought one of the ubiquitous minimills and started in. First, there were some things that needed to be fixed for proper operation. First, the Z axis was a horrible mess of backlash. So, I fitted a small ballscrew. It

A friend was going to scrap an R2E3 Bridgeport mill with a dead control. I gladly gave him the scrap value of the machine. After some cleanup, I found the original servo amps were working, but those Contraves NC400 amps made a HORRIBLE whine that could be heard a block away! So, I got some