[Bdi4emc-help] stepper motor limitations

Sat Mar 17 23:20:12 CET 2007

i have a small mill with stepper motors, gecko drives running EMC1 (with 
quickstep).

yesterday, i decided to try gcode for the FIRST time and try machining 
some wood.  i used the rectpocket program from 
http://jelinux.pico-systems.com/gcode.html to generate gcode.  when i 
first ran the generated code, i received  a "following error" message.  
the first move in the gcode was F40 and i changed that to F20.   after 
that, i did not see any additional error messages.

the first pocket had a couple defects.  when i looked through the gcode, 
i noticed moves as fast as F48 and i changed all of these to F12 and 
with the F12 as the max speed.  after making the edits, the pockets came 
out perfectly.

maybe i have some tuning problems or perhaps this is normal behavior for 
a modest machine.  i don't know.  here are some dumb questions:

should a small system be able to reliably execute moves like f40 or so?
what is a "following error" and is it fundamentally different than a 
missed step?

djs