The breakout board splits these signals so that the step, direction, and enable lines for each axis are routed to each motor driver board. Our stepper motor driver kits make use of the parallel port signals. This is usually done by reading and writing pins on the parallel port, but there are some motor controllers which can operate from serial or USB, as well.
The CNC control software then reads the G-code and turns it into motion to drive your machine. CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) software (wikipedia) converts your CAD drawings into Gcode, which is the programming language that the CNC control software understands. So, what software is involved in CNC? There are primarily three parts: Your CAD (Computer Aided Design) software (wikipedia) is where you design your parts to be routed, lathed, milled, or cut. you probably wouldn't be here right now, would you? The experts out there may disagree, but if you had to be an expert to do this. The AXIS Graphical User Interface is second to none (IMHO). EMC2 is completely Open Source, free to use, and probably the most reliable, flexible, robust system out there. TurboCNC is a great piece of software, if you don't want to visualize your tool paths in real time and are comfortable in DOS. Mach3 has a HUGE support group and bypasses some of the timing issues of the Windows environment. We prefer EMC2 on Linux and Ubuntu, but there are others available for those who are shy. Couple the availability of low/no cost CNC control software, low-cost integrated circuitry, and the tons of high-end hardware now found on eBay: and for the first time in history, CNC is attainable to the hobby market.
CNC SoftwareThe fall-out of the DOT-COM bust has brought CNC to the hobbyist.
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