What limits the feed rate to 48 IPM?

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1

I’m completely new to this project (wait listed) and I’m blown away by this community, the level of support, and the collaboration. Really impressive what’s happening here and thanks to everyone who puts so much time into this.

I want to know what limits the machine to a feed rate of 48 ipm. Since there is such tremendous demand for the kits and motors are going to take a long time to arrive, I want to build my own version using different motors that are more readily available. It would be great if in doing so I could bump up the feed rate some, but I’m concerned that the limitation is with the processing power of the arduino and not the mechanics. Can anyone speak to this? I’m sure 48 ipm is a hard coded limit for safety purposes, but what is the actual limitation behind the scenes?

2

rpm of the motors * diameter of the 10 tooth sprockets. I purchased a set of 25
tooth sprockets that should let things move a little more than twice as fast,
but at the cost of lower force (so the sled will need to be lighter). I also
expect to run the machine closer to vertical.

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3

Awesome. That’s great to hear it’s a mechanical limitation and not on the processing side. Thanks for the info. The motor search continues!

4

There may be processor limits (nobody has done this yet), but the option to
switch to the triangular kinematics (see the topic
http://maslowcnc.trydiscourse.com/t/throwing-my-hat-in-the-sled-modification-ring/193
for several options) would result in a huge decrease in the processor power
needed.

At some point the processor needed to handle the encoders will be a limit, but
going to larger sprockets doesn’t change that rate (but other motor/encoder/gear
sets will, currently it’s 8148 steps/rev)