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Italian shed ornament - Nick's cnc router repower


NickJ

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11 hours ago, ajg193 said:

Take a look at clough42's videos on youtube, he has some decent stuff that is relevant

Oh, there is a stack of content there, cheers! Do I spy your lathe mods inspiration?

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On 04/07/2022 at 22:26, NickJ said:

Fricken mail day!

7i77 6ch servo control board and 7i92 Ethernet board.

IMG_1062.jpeg.370fd8c117776f96169c7e5b363a61c5.jpeg

8ch relay output module, I expect many more of these to end up in the system, this should be enough to get started.....

IMG_1063.jpeg.131960ffc405a36570e6bb54f5243573.jpeg

 

On lesser (But way more important issues) Loading Linux onto the computer has been a ballache of learning about stuff I care little for. It turns out Debian(OS) and linuxcnc are not friends which I lost a few evenings trying to figure out, that lead to a copy of Linux Mint being wired my way "Just hit load" 

Yeah right

Kept getting a "Grub2" error, who? what? eh?

So i've now learnt more acronyms that still mean little but the gist is;
-Enable legacy boot (in BIOS)
-Custom install partition table
-reserved BIOS, swap and main partitions

With the OS loaded to the hard drive, a healthy reward was the latency dropping from well in the no go range to well inside the preferred range, stoked.

Another weird issues was the cheap VGA adapter, for some bizarre reason boot screens don't pass through meaning I had to borrow the girlfriend's office monitor to fiddle in the BIOS, this had me thinking I had bricked the computer until sanity suggested the logical problem solving technique of trying a different monitor....

Slow progress, but moving forward and closer to hardware movement!

 

Good morning friend.

Why didn't you install that pre-compiled (I think thats the word) version of linux that has linuxcnc pre-installed? That's what I set up on mine and it works great (jitter is a bit shit but within acceptable ranges)

Does that pendant interface with the mesa card?

 

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11 hours ago, flyingbrick said:

 

Good morning friend.

Why didn't you install that pre-compiled (I think thats the word) version of linux that has linuxcnc pre-installed? That's what I set up on mine and it works great (jitter is a bit shit but within acceptable ranges)

Does that pendant interface with the mesa card?

 

Yeah so i tried the latest LinuxCNC version but it just didn't want to fly with my computer, I had some potential causes rattled off but my inexperience could not comprehend what i was being told. In the end, the good man who is helping me gave his custom Mint setup which in comparison loaded happily, as I have no idea exactly whats going on, working = good and i'll just keep running with this option (until is doesn't).

Yip, the MPG will wire to the Mesa 7i77, i'm not 100% the exact pinouts just yet, but i'll get to that in time.

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Successful weekend with getting all axes to move via Linux, unsuccessful due to hopes and dreams wiring.

The old controller used a 4 wire feedback loop, what appears to be each phase of the encoder ChA,Chb,Ch0 + gnd, I took a massive assumption and just hooked each phase up to the 3 positive inputs on the Mesa card.

IMG_1216.jpeg.01aa94a5ff514bc5360aeb05604ca526.jpeg

Nope Nope and Nope, although open loop shifts things (I obviously got the AO signal and enable in the right place) into closed loop just ends up in runaway, or as i term it, a good test of the E-Stop circuit....

Thankfully in the folder of schematics there is also the servo drive tech sheets

IMG_1215.jpeg.e8e1d8fd90917b3061be4c74a5ba77d1.jpeg

Digging through the wording, the drive bounces the raw encoder signal out pin 19,20,33,34,35 and 36, it is these that I should have used.

 

Today I picked up 12m of CAT6 which should do the trick, now for a spare day to open up the fiddly little connectors solder and route to the Mesa....

 

While I had everything powered up I messed about with the air controls a bit more, using clippy leads I went through the control solenoids one by one to see what actually worked, surprisingly I managed to get the spindle to release and grab a tool holder, will need much more work to get tool changes running but its a slice of motivation I needed after the wiring woes.

 

 

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You understand how much i'm banking on this then!

So getting the axes to work is pretty good as once one runs, its pretty much copy/paste but.....

The X is 3.5m long and currently half buried under usual shed stuff so its out for testing on.
The Y is 1.5m but if running away would smash the side of the Datsun.
Which leave the 250mm of Z as the obvious to test on, except it has a brake which if released too soon dumps down to full negative, tripping the overtravel alarms and because I never noticed, then spend an hour trying to find why the servodrive enable contactor wouldn't pull in....

So the only way to test each axis is to drag the Datsun out into the carport, clear the table (just in case) and test on the Y axis.

I'm reasonably confident that once running the VFD will be straight forward then a full dive into classic ladder to enable all the required pneumatics, my hope here is that there is pretty basic feedback so at least trial and error has a better chance of success compared with the software oddities currently plaguing me.

Oh, and then a G-Code refresher

Followed by hasty CAM refresher

And likely forking out for Fusion360 to get all the toolpaths

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39 minutes ago, NickJ said:

You understand how much i'm banking on this then!

So getting the axes to work is pretty good as once one runs, its pretty much copy/paste but.....

The X is 3.5m long and currently half buried under usual shed stuff so its out for testing on.
The Y is 1.5m but if running away would smash the side of the Datsun.
Which leave the 250mm of Z as the obvious to test on, except it has a brake which if released too soon dumps down to full negative, tripping the overtravel alarms and because I never noticed, then spend an hour trying to find why the servodrive enable contactor wouldn't pull in....

So the only way to test each axis is to drag the Datsun out into the carport, clear the table (just in case) and test on the Y axis.

I'm reasonably confident that once running the VFD will be straight forward then a full dive into classic ladder to enable all the required pneumatics, my hope here is that there is pretty basic feedback so at least trial and error has a better chance of success compared with the software oddities currently plaguing me.

Oh, and then a G-Code refresher

Followed by hasty CAM refresher

And likely forking out for Fusion360 to get all the toolpaths

It's f360 cam not free?

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Just now, flyingbrick said:

It's f360 cam not free?

yes, but they've locked some features away behind paywall, i'm not up to date on the details, but thats the way regular users have informed me.

Also been told of loopholes via free internet courses which may be worth exploring.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Last weekend I wired up the CAT6 cable to much better results.

IMG_1275.jpeg.3137f0cbeb19119f02901b6fe569a878.jpeg

All axes return sensible values with movement until they're stationary, then the input starts creeping, it would appear I have a pretty large noise source somewhere. In chatting with men of greater knowledge it sounds like input noise, likely my 5V supply rail not appropriately earthed. 

So in the usual weekend mode i'll push all the toys outside, liven up the machine and have a poke around with the multimeter/scope.

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5 minutes ago, flyingbrick said:

How do you earth a 5v supply rail... Damn that's got me confused. Do you mean the 5v power supply itself?

Just twist the 5V wire to earth........

Haha, yeah thats terribly written, I think the 5V supply isn't grounded correctly which has left the 5V floating, well at least thats the simplest answer to what is observed.

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