Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

The 100% key commands 100% of programmed (via an Snnnn) command, or 50% of maximum speed if running in manual spindle mode.

You might want to recheck the Encoder expansion board documents. I believe it supports differential encoder INPUTS for reading encoders. I do not believe it supports differential quadrature OUTPUTS to control a servo motor drive.

Marc spotted in the manual where these drives can be configured for step and direction input. Theoretically, all that you would need to do to get them to work with Acorn, would be to create a single-ended to differential converter for the inputs. There are TTL logic chips available that can do this.

Just because the DRO returns to zero, does not mean you are not losing steps. Unless you have connected the drive alarm signals to Acorn (and configured the inputs accordingly) , the Acorn has no way of knowing if your drives and motors may have missed steps. You need to set up an indicator on the a...

IIRC, the upgrade from Pro to Ultimate is only $299.

WD SSDs are more than good enough. The recommendation is more to NOT buy the $5.99 special from Alibaba.

5V differential quadrature is correct, but 1000 or 1024 lines is better for a spindle. Especially if you have a spindle that runs over 6000 rpm. You can exceed the encoder bandwidth with too many lines per rev. You don't mention your spindle rpm, so you need to check that you don't exceed the encode...

Spindle motor speed doesn't matter. You want the speed of the actual lathe spindle (the speed of the chuck). CNC12 does not regulate the spindle speed. It only measures the speed of the spindle via the encoder to synchronize the Z axis movement for threading and feed rate.

Have a look at volumetric compensation: https://centroidcncforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=9266

The difference between mill and router is the buttons and functions displayed on the Virtual Control Panel. The program is identical, and the VCP is fully customizable. It will not make a difference on which you choose as I suspect you will want to customize the VCP to fit your application anyway.