Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

Hello,
I am looking at the Acorn controller for use with a custom CNC type machine. The machine would have 1-8 'print heads' (not a 3D printer), tethered to the same axis. Is the Acorn controller capable of sending multiple, independent, discrete 24v signals to the heads?
Unlike a plasma or laser head application there should not be any modulation of axis height or head output power.

I apologize in advance if this is a basic question answered somewhere.

Thanks for your help!
-GS

Not sure is Acorn can do what you ask, but dont think so. You should take a look Openpnp. Its an open source motion planner mostly used for pick n place pcb fab. So long as your driver board can support the IO and is running RRF or Smoothie or GRBHal of some other inline gcode interpreter. You can add as much io as your hw will support ad hoc.

ACORN has 8 open collector outputs, so that aspect is covered if you don't want to control anything else.

The outputs can be controlled at a minimum of 1ms intervals if the "fast stage" is used in the PLC program.

When you say "print head" and "tethered to the same axis", I think you need high speed output control slaved directly to axis position. ACORN does not have that feature.

My first impression is that ACORN will not meet your requirements.

There is not enough detail in your description to say whether any CNC controller can do what you want. If you want to drive three axis to X, Y, Z position and then send a group of 24V signals to 8 individual items, then yes, Acorn can do that.

As eng199 (Centroid Engineer, BTW) points out, the Acorn has 8 outputs on-board so you can have one signal to each "print head" and you can toggle that on and off as fast as 1ms. There is also an Ether1616 expansion board with 16 additional inputs and 16 additional outputs, and you can add up to three. That gives you a total of 56 outputs, or up to 7 outputs for each print head.

The Ether1616 does come with some timing tradeoffs - on the order of 50ms of delay so you'll need to consider that as well. You could also use the 8 I/O ports on the Acorn to bit-bang commands to and external micro-controller or plc to control your 8 "print heads".

A better description of your task will result in some better advice.

if you dont need to run gcode, look at using a low cost industrial controller, like the Teknic Clearcore

or go PLC route and try a low cost BRX PLC from automation direct. you can get cards that can do 2MHz