CINCINATTI MILACRON ARROW 500 (BDS4 + VFS5) WITH MESA 7i77 + 6i25 WITH LINUXCNC

Hi,

Good day. Newbie here. Would just like to crowdsource and steer us to the right direction with regards to retrofitting a milacron arrow with BDS4 axis servo controllers and VFS5 spindle servo controllers.

Any inputs and directions will be greatly appreciated.

Hi Andy,

Good day. From what i have gathered in the user manuals available in the internet and checking the existing connection from the servo controllers to the non-functioning acramatic 2100 controller,

each servo controller (X, Y, Z, and Spindle) has
1) +-10V inputs (i assume to drive the servo motors)
2) An A & /A, B & /B, and Z & /Z encoder outputs.

I was thinking of connecting the +-10V servo inputs to the 7i77 by its TB5 outputs namely, ENA0+-, ENA1+-, ENA2+-, and ENA3+-.

Then connecting the servo encoder outputs to the 7i77 by its TB3-TB4 inputs namely, QA0 & /QA0, QB0 & /QB0, IDX0 & /IDX0, for all axes and the spindle.

If that is correct, my only problem now would be the configuration under linuxcnc which I have no idea where to begin.

As I have already purchased the Plug-N-Go Kit (7i77 + 6i25) from Mesa, I would like to use them. But will look into your suggestion since they have more pins. Also, it would be generally hard for me to purchase additional boards since I am from the Philippines.

Thank you very much for your assistance.

Normally the basic configuration is created by one of the two configuration utilities:
pncconf or MesaCT. These are GUI programs where you enter the intended interface hardware and
basic machine specifications (dimensions, encoder scaling etc) and I/O connections
(limit/home switches spindle controls etc)

Note that the analog out pins are AOUTn. The ENAn+ and ENAn- pins are a switch to enable the
drives (on when enabled)
 

Hi PCW,

Noted. Will look to the pncconf in depth next week. I tried the pncconf yesterday. I got to the point where you choose which mesa boards I am using. From gathering in the internet, i should be using the 5i25 since 6i25 is not in linuxcnc and 7i77 x 2 i guess...

As for the Analog I/O thank you for the clarification. So instead of ENAn+ and ENAn-, I should connect the servo drives to the 7i77's AOUTn and respective GND.

Thank you for your assistance.

Will keep the smart serial cards in mind in the future. Thank you Andy.

I tried using MesaCT to generae the ini and hal files but upon loading in linuxcnc, it produces an error.

Debug file information:
Note: Using POSIX realtime
./main.hal:31: Pin 'hm2_5i25.0.7i77.0.4.analogena' does not exist
2243
Stopping realtime threads
Unloading hal components
RTAPI_PCI: Unmapped 65536 bytes at 0x7f0b2d806000
Note: Using POSIX realtime

I do not know how to proceed. Kindly advise.

For information purposes,
Drive 0 - x axis
Drive 1 - y axis
Drive 2 - z axis
Drive 5 - Spindle

Regards,
Kelvin
 

What tommylight said.

main.hal:31: Pin 'hm2_5i25.0.7i77.0.4.analogena' does not exist

The channel 4 above makes no sense (on a basic 7I77 configuration the analog channel would be 1)