Benezan Electronics of Rottenburg, Germany has developed the Beamicon2 Expandable CNC Controller with Ethernet. This professional hardware design uses the Propeller 1 Multicore Microcontroller to deliver real-time signals at 1.6 MHz through six stepper or servo drives, simultaneously. You’ll see one Propeller 1 in the controller shown above, but the multi-axis CNC router shown below has five Propeller 1s inside.
This versatile design has five inputs for reference switches and e-Stop, two relays for spindle and coolant/suction, analog output for speed control, and a relay for holding brake on the Z-axis. All inputs and outputs are fully buffered and interference suppressed. The design operates with a 15-75V input voltage and the hardware mounts conveniently on a DINrail with enclosure.
Benezan Electronics shared his development process on the Parallax forums, where you may read the story from a developer’s perspective. Benezan Electronics designs may be purchased from Rocketronics, where you may also download the manuals and see detailed specifications.
Mr. Benezan says “It absolutely saved my life that the Propeller is available almost all of the time, at least much better than any of the popular ARM and AVM processors. In October and November of 2021, it was also hard to obtain but we had enough stock so our production never stopped. I’ve spent much time redesigning a lot of PCBs to be able to produce them with the parts still available. You can easily replace transistors, relays, voltage regulators, and so on with different types. But if your main processor (Propeller 1) platform becomes unobtainable you’re in trouble. It would take years to re-write all the software if it was even possible at all. I think no other processor I know would be able to do what the Propeller offers when it comes to the processing of real-time signals. It would take an FPGA to replicate its features!”
