And ... just bear in mind that the STG II card was ISA bus (good luck finding anyone making those anymore) and is now 20 years old ... for a couple of hundred bucks you can buy an equivalent and modern Mesa card that is fully supported, PCI bus, etc.
Whilst it would not be impossible to build an STG II replica, you'd have to reverse engineer the PCB, find some now obsolete chips, learn how to do SMT assembly (including fine pitch for the FPGA) navigate around the copyright issues, commit to maintaining the firmware ... and at the end of it, you would have an ISA card that is twenty years out of date. My advice: just buy a Mesa card, but if for some crazy reason you do want to build a motion control card from scratch, I wouldn't start there! On Fri, 1 Apr 2022 at 20:55, Robin Szemeti <[email protected]> wrote: > Did you contact the copyright holders for the STG cards and ask them if > you can manufacture the product? That would be your first step. > > On Fri, 1 Apr 2022 at 19:58, Dominic Francisco <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Big Howdy to the Group: >> Our 501, C-19 non-profit, veteransinitiatives.org, is a small school, >> composed of MilVets who have defended this priceless Nation. >> Our backrouinds include : Machining, Founding, Patternmaking, >> Metallurgy, Physical Chemistry, Heat Treat, Ceramics: a bunch of reprobate >> motor-heads, hot-rodders & gear-heads, who remain convinced, even in our >> advanced state of degradation, that we shall continue our mfg school to >> place our warriors in our Nation's mfg sector. >> We purchased one of these splendid, STG motion boards some years ago >> to >> update the control of a 12klb, 1978, 4-axis Monarch VMC; worked like a >> champ! >> This STG board was capable of 8-Axis with a servo update time of 1 ms. >> we retained the original thyristor amplifier which could output ~400 A & >> 300 V on start-up. the worktable capacity was ~1600lbs! our for-profit >> side regularly whittled out SAE- 4000 series steels for industry. >> We sold that VMC to some DisAbled American Veterans (DAV's) we had >> trained in our NP & started farming-out work to them, mostly DoD forgings >> & >> castings. >> We are now primarily a non-profit helping our warriors find meaningful >> employment in our Nation to bring mfg back to the USofA. >> Now we find that the STG firm went out of biz, with the un-fortunate >> death of its inventor & mfg. now whattarwegonnado? >> >> We got us 2 plans: purchase several used STG boards to continue >> teaching digital control & machine tool rebuilding to our most deserving >> citizen, our DAV's. we have also interviewed some ambulatory paralyzed >> veterans (PVA's) to join in. >> The other crazed choice, is to start mfg the STG board from scratch. >> some of our volunteers have experience in industry mfg circuit boards. we >> could whittle-out frames to silk screen the traces & set up one of our >> small mills to NC the holes. >> We have mfg about 50 small circuit cards for the thyristor amps. these >> control the beefy thyristors: zero-crossing detector, gate control, >> switching, BEMF damping & small-signal routing when reversing the axis >> (S-curves on start-up & when approaching the end of axis & corners). >> Some of the EMC crew out there may have some suggestions on another >> control board (or combination of control cards) we could mfg. >> >> We are committed to mfg a motion control system. just think of what >> our >> warriors could learn in this esoteric atmosphere; consider their >> employment >> choices! >> >> We hope to hear from you EMC, LINUX.org & CNC.org participants in this >> technical worthy endeavor. >> >> >> May God protect our valiant >> warriors, >> >> don anders >> patrick >> callahan >> giovanni >> bertoni >> nora >> o'neille >> sean finnegan >> >> [email protected] >> veteransinitiatives.org >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> + >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Emc-users mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users >> > _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
