Quote
bobc
If the micro had more interesting processing to do it would make more sense, but using firmware to do a low level processing job is an unnecessary complication. One thing a micro could do is to manage set temperatures, but that is such a trivial task it is hardly worth offloading. What would be useful to offload is driving the steppers, but that is the hardest function to divide up and maintain synchronisation.
Yea, this is exctly what I am looking for. I want to build a polar bot with a heated bed (and maybe some additions later like a conveyor belt). The best way to transmit power to the build plate (if you want to spin it in one direction all the time) is a slip ring I guess. There are different slip rings available, some are designed for high power, some are designed for data signals. Slip rings that can deal with both are rare. So I would only transmit power via contacts to the build platform. For the data transfer I would use some kind of wireless transmission (maybe only transmit data once per rotation). For this reason I would need a micro controller that controls the temperature of the heat bed. But I am not sure what kind of communication protocol should be applied between the main controller and the bed (temperature) controller.