Hi Tom,

Yes, 10mm lead. They are spec to move 60kg at 1200mm/sec. I have moved a car battery using Mach3 and my drives set to x10 step multiply, but that would only be 450khz (I think mach3 maxes out at 45khz or something). I thought I was going faster...maybe mach3 can do a bit more than 45khz.

1200mm/sec would be 47 inches/sec or about 2800IPM. That is rapid!

If the Kflop works, it is going to be awesome compared to mach3 and a parallel port.

The fiber laser is tiny (about the size of a box of cereal) and runs off 24VDC at 4 to 6 amps. It is a 10 watt average power 5000 watt peak power pulsed unit with the pulses 100ns long and 1mJ energy. The pulses per second can be varied from 20khz to 100khz, so you in essence can get a continuous cut. Made by IPG model YLP-0.5/100/20/10
Ebay score :-)

The beam quality is excellent (M^2 < 1.5, probably more like 1.2) and it can be focused down to 10um. I have done some test cuts on my Shizuoka cnc mill with the laser just attached to a 1 inch shank in the BT30 toolholder. It was a good proof of concept but my x-axis ballscrew has 0.0015 backlash and that is very noticeable when cutting out a steel part that is only a few thousands of an inch in diameter. In this picture you can see the backlash in the teeth and in the holes...but you can get an idea of what might be possible when I get Kflop and the NSK/Adept modules running. I am also mounting a new achromat doublet lens which should reduce the kerf by half. The resistor in the pic is an 0805 surface mount.


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DynoMotion/photos/album/1201742484/pic/316464130/view?picmode=&mode=tn&order=ordinal&start=1&count=20&dir=asc

--- In DynoMotion@yahoogroups.com, Tom Kerekes <tk@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Roland,
>
> Is the ball screw 10mm pitch?
>
> 8000 counts / 10mm x 25.4mm/inch = 20320 counts/inch
>
>
> Let's see:  20320 counts/inch x 2000IPM x 1min/60sec = 677KHz (should be possible).
>
> You can connect differential outputs to KFLOP single ended inputs by just connecting one of the differential signals.  You may need to add a terminating resistor of 100~200 ohms near KFLOP.  Otherwise there are low cost cable modules available from USDigital.com
>
> I'm curious how much power does your laser need/have to cut steel?
>
> Regards
> TK
>