StepGenerator4

The StepGenerator4 (SG4) is a cost effective, high performance 4 axis stepper motor controller with built-in 500MHz 32Bit processor. It controls up to four stepper motor drivers with step and direction signals.

The SG4 performs all real time critical tasks such as acceleration, deceleration, linear and circular interpolation and accurate step output based on target positions and velocity settings.
Communication between the SG4 and the host (PC, microcontroller, etc.) takes place over an asynchronous, full duplex serial port using simple ASCII commands.

e.g.
Set max. velocity to 5000 steps/s -> “s1:5000\r”
Set min. velocity to 1000 steps/s -> “s2:1000\r”
Set acceleration rate 500 steps/s/s -> “s3:500\r”
Set deceleration rate 400 steps/s/s -> “s4:400\r”
Linear interpolation -> “s51:x1000 y2000 z3000 u4000\r”
Circular interpolation CW -> “s52:x1000 y0 i500 j0\r”

The downloadable zip-file (Examples) contains a simplified CNC control software including the Delphi source code. The G-Code intepreter currently supports only a few G-Codes such as G0, G1, G2, G3, G20, G21, G90, G91, G90.1, G91.1, G17, G18, G19 and feedt rate.

Furthermore the SG4 contains one I2C-bus controller (I2C-bus master) for communication with external I2C devices such as IO-Expander, AD/DA converter, etc. over the serial port (UART to I2C converter).

e.g.
Write to IO-Expander (0x40) 2 bytes (0xAA and 0x55): “iw:4002AA55\r”
Read from IO-Expander 2 bytes: “ir:4002\r”