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Conversion of a China portal milling machine from Mach3 hardware controller

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16 Jan 2022 22:00 #232070 by RobertS
Conversion of a China portal milling machine from Mach3 hardware controller was created by RobertS
Hi everyone,
I would like to briefly present my project to you and maybe someone has already done something similar and knows one or the other component of my milling machine. Any help is of course welcome, because I'm quite a beginner when it comes to LinuxCNC and the MESA cards.

Thw whloe story short:
A few years ago I imported a 60 x 90cm portal milling machine with rotary unit from China. The good piece came with a "WXHC USB Motion Card" and a Mach3 license. The first attempts were quite successful, but the combination of USB hardware and Mach3 drove me crazy.
For professional reasons, working with CNC and CAD took a back seat. But now I want to start again and have decided to switch to LinuxCNC and an Ethernet-capable MESA card.

The milling machine consists of:
  • 60 x 90cm 3 axis table
  • 57BHH76-300D-26E Stepper Motor (3 x)
  • Omron tl-q5Mc1-z home switches (3 x)
  • Rotary unit
  • dm542 Stepper driver (4 x)
  • GDZ80-1.5B Spindle Motor (water cooled)
  • Water pump for cooling
  • dzb200 VFD
  • 3D-Finder touch probe (was never connected yet)
  • WHB0-4B-4 wireless wheel
  • MESA 7i76E
  • Linux Installation (Debian besed) with the "probe basic screen" (kcjengr.github.io/probe_basic/dev_install.html) 
    and a 1920 x 1080 touch screen
Conversion steps:
  1. powering the MESA 7i76e (see picture)
     
  2. connect the Stepper-Motors (should be quite clear - see scheme)
    Stepper Drv________Driver (7i76)
    PUL+ _____________STEPx+
    PUL- _____________ STEPx-
    DIR+ _____________ DIRx+
    DIR- _____________ DIRx-
  3. connect the home-switches (see attachement 1)
  4. HAL & initial configuration
    (no real glue until now, any suggestion welcome)
  5. doing the first tests
    The goal would be moving the axes by LinuxCNC
    (anything wrong until now?)
  6. connecting dzb200 & spindle motor
    (no idea how to bring the the VFD & the MESA-card together)
  7. Connexct the water pump for cooling the spindle
  8. connect and setup the 3D-Finder touch probe
  9. connect and setup the WHB0-4B-4 wireless wheel
That's the rough plan. If someone has already made one or more points for themselves, I am grateful for every tip that helps to avoid mistakes and save time.

regards
Robert
 
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16 Jan 2022 22:45 #232079 by tommylight
Replied by tommylight on topic Conversion of a China portal milling machine from Mach3 hardware controller

powering the MESA 7i76e

Power it, connect to PC, set the network connection and ping the card to verify the connection.

connect the Stepper-Motors

That should work, so for now move to testing by doing a config, see below.

connect the home-switches

Use the built in "show hal configuration" to check if the switches are wired properly and they trigger.

HAL & initial configuration

Use PncConf to make a new configuration, set roughly the axis, inputs and outputs, spindle. This can be done without having anything wired except power to the Mesa board. Save the config, it can be edited later.

doing the first tests
The goal would be moving the axes by LinuxCNC

Start the newly created config, F1 to get out of E-stop, F2 to enable, test by doing short jogs using arrow keys on the keyboard, use hal show to check limit/home switches.

connecting dzb200 & spindle motor

Mesa 7i76E has a header just for spindle (TB4 i think) for analog control of VFD's, the only thing to know is do you need spindle reverse.

Connexct the water pump for cooling the spindle

Any output from the Mesa board can be used to trigger a relay that in turn will start the pump. It also has to be "wired" in HAL or when setting outputs in PncConf.

connect and setup the 3D-Finder touch probe

Any input will do, also can be set in hal or in PncConf, choose "probe input".

connect and setup the WHB0-4B-4 wireless wheel

I can not help with this, but there are several ways and topic dealing with this, so do spend some time reading and chose the easiest solution.
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17 Jan 2022 06:39 #232092 by rodw
Replied by rodw on topic Conversion of a China portal milling machine from Mach3 hardware controller
Some people have found this video I did useful.

There is another one by the Feral Engineer that one user said should be viewed in conjunction as they thought I deal with hardware and he deals with software. That user has gone onto convert a MAch machine and is amazed sat the results.
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17 Jan 2022 09:41 #232102 by RobertS
Replied by RobertS on topic Conversion of a China portal milling machine from Mach3 hardware controller
Thank you very much tommylight & rodw for this great first hints.
Unfortunately today is Monday an I (and may be we all) have to work again. So time ist limited but i think I'll get the cabeling done this week.

Would I have known about the video it would have saved me a lot of tme during my first trials in the last months. But however - I think the second half shows a lot of usefull information about how to connect switches, sensors and other peripherals.

Again - Thanks a lot guys!
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17 Jan 2022 17:57 - 17 Jan 2022 18:01 #232146 by RobertS
Replied by RobertS on topic Conversion of a China portal milling machine from Mach3 hardware controller
A Some progress today:
  • power supply to the MESA Board is done
  • cabeling of the steppers
  • connection of the home switches
    (getting GND of TB1/PIN7 is a temporary solution until a power distribution bar arrives)
  • connection of the emergency switch
  • the linux installation has been updated

    Thats the new connection status:


    Here a picture of the switched on card (temporary placement in the housing)
     

    One question:
    If I do a PncConf - I write a totally new configuration? Right?
    Which files do I have to copy to save the current one? I spent a lot of time during my first trials to configure the WHB0-4B-4 wireless wheel and I would like to save that work somehow.
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Last edit: 17 Jan 2022 18:01 by RobertS.

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17 Jan 2022 18:53 #232160 by tommylight
Replied by tommylight on topic Conversion of a China portal milling machine from Mach3 hardware controller
You can also edit configs using PncConf.

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17 Jan 2022 20:27 #232181 by rodw
Replied by rodw on topic Conversion of a China portal milling machine from Mach3 hardware controller
Sometimes I just make crappy configs with pncconf and not worry  about the values of anything, then copy and paste my hal info into the new config hal and ini

But if you are writing hal by hand, why not keep doing that?

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18 Jan 2022 11:40 #232270 by RobertS
Replied by RobertS on topic Conversion of a China portal milling machine from Mach3 hardware controller
Got stocked yesterday, because the IP configuration was a bit tricky...
In the end it turned out that I only believed some explanation videos more than common sense. What also cost me time was the fact that the MESA card probably doesn't want to talk to an MS Windows DHCP server.
Anyway - I wrote down my experiences here . Maybe it will help another user with similar problems .

Tonight I'll try to get a step further with pncconf.

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18 Jan 2022 12:18 #232275 by tommylight
Replied by tommylight on topic Conversion of a China portal milling machine from Mach3 hardware controller

 What also cost me time was the fact that the MESA card probably doesn't want to talk to an MS Windows DHCP server.

Why would it???
There is no use case ever for a Mesa board to talk to any DHCP server, let alone a windows one.
Where did you get the idea for that ? I would promptly remove it as it is very bad info.

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18 Jan 2022 12:21 - 18 Jan 2022 12:24 #232276 by RobertS
Replied by RobertS on topic Conversion of a China portal milling machine from Mach3 hardware controller
because it is an option in the MESA documentation...
Option 3 W2 UP & W3 DOWN means BOOTIP (DHCP) and Page 29 in the docs.
 

If a product offers an option it should work. And DHCP/BOOTIP is a common state of the art method for IP-address distribution.
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Last edit: 18 Jan 2022 12:24 by RobertS.

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