dholden

Thanks for your suggestions, you are correct in both what is happening in my application as well as the types of suggestions I was looking for.

I have on several occasions used a hand wheel encoder (manual pulse generator) as part of a setup scheme for multiple axis machines. The encoders typically have a resolution of 400 counts per revolution (post quad). When using the hand wheel encoder I simply use it as the master and engage master following for that axis or group of axes. However my problem begins when I scale the encoder so that 1 revolution of this encoder give 1 inch of travel on the specified axis. As you might guess I can easily get a quantization problem when doing this since the resolution between the encoder and the axis being moved becomes so different. This is where I begin to wonder what I am doing wrong because this is apparently a 'standard' resolution for a hand wheel encoder (in fact it is hard to find higher resolution had wheel encoders) but when i look at CNC machines this type of jogging is commonly done and do not seem to suffer from this problem. Is there some type of filtering, dampening, or averaging of this signal so that this is minimized more? Are there other approaches to this problem i should be using instead of the master following I am currently using? Thanks in advance for you suggestions.

I would like to get some information on how one determines the best servo loop update rate for the specific application they are working on. From what i understand slower, heavier, and higher inertia axes benefit more from slower servo loop update rates of ~2kHz and faster more dynamic systems benefit from higher rates. I would like to know specifically how one determines when to use what rate. Are there general rules of thumb that seem to work well or are there more specific ways of finding the best update rate to use? Thanks in advance for you recommendations.