On Mar 14, 1:49*am, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
Andy Dingley wrote:

Laser cutting machine controller. Interprets G-code and also runs the
user interface to set the machine up.

that is a first class idea...

can it control stepper motors directly tho?

A project called GRBBL already does this on the Arduino, although the
Arduino is creaking under the load and isn't running a user interface
at the same time.

For CNC mills (less so for lasers) the steppers are controlled by a
stepper drive module, like a Gecko. These take a simple control
interface of "num steps / direction" and also a configurable setup for
fastest speed, acceleration rates and current limits. This makes the
control task simpler, as the controller doesn't need to generate the
motor pulses. It also allows the rather significant (for mills anyway)
feature of current and maybe temperature control of the motors. You
can't do this from a single controller as there just isn't enough IO
to go round. You could of course build your own stepper controllers,
with their own embedded controllers, but the commercial ones are cheap
enough.