One of the oldest requested features for the moteus brushless controller has been a form of trajectory control beyond constant velocity trajectories. For most applications this is not an actual deal-breaker, because arbitrary trajectories can be approximated by piecewise linear constant velocity trajectories in the application layer. However, for many people, that is big hurdle to jump over to start with, and for some, it can actually limit application effectiveness because a fair amount of CAN bandwidth is required to achieve the high rate control necessary for smooth motion.

Some time ago I wrote about using the wcubed vise for the Pocket NC. While I don’t end up using it very often any more, mostly because I rarely work with rectangular stock, it can be useful from time to time. Unfortunately, it is no longer manufactured. In case anyone is interested in replicating it, I’ve taken at least a minimal stab at modeling it up based on measurements of my unit along with necessary hardware as picked from McMaster. I suspect the model should be good enough to get something that works.