Koike Aronson Plasma Conversion - sanity check on Mesa board selection?

Hello All,

I recently got a 5x10 Koike plasma table with a super old controller that is no longer supported by the three companies that were involved in it. I'm not happy with the performance of the machine (and how old the controller software is) and I cannot reconfigure it due to administrator passwords that have long since been removed from the memories of those involved. 

I'm very comfortable with Linux, control theory, wiring, and would like to modernize this setup with LinuxCNC / PlasmaC.

The machine has 2 channel + Index encoders, brushed motors, Advanced Motion Controls 12A8 Drivers (+/- 10v input), and Tachometers to close the loop with the motor drivers. I also have a Hypertherm Powermax45XP.

Browsing the (currently available) selection of Mesa cards I have stumbled onto this solution:

+ 7i36 4 Channel Analog Servo interface
+ 5i24-25 FPGA PCI Anything I/O Interface
+ THCAD2 High isolation A-D accessory
+ a machine from my closet


I was curious if this setup was reasonable for a retrofit? Any advice would be appreciated -- thank you kindly!

The 7I92T[x] is available.

Thank you for your thoughts! Forgive my ignorance, but what would the step/dir channels get me for this setup? My understanding is that I cannot use them for the axes as they are brushed motor controllers. Is this just a thought for future proofing?

Thanks again!

Love it, great thinking!One new question along the lines of this upgrade - would an Animatics smartmotor Z be supported? It looks like it has four inputs (Up, Down, Manual/Auto IHS, and "Cut 1"). This is currently driven by the Innerlogic THC which just commands up/down via relays based on the arc voltage (or so it appears). The smartmotor seemingly has a built-in function for rapid Z then a precise Z when you're in the range of touching material. Given this I'd have to have some open-loop conversion for initial torch-height to seconds of lift after an ohmic Z sensing? Is this reasonable?Also, here's what I've compiled based on your suggestions -- thank you so much!

By way of update, I got the machine cutting today, thanks for all the support in this thread as well as all of the others I poured over the past week.

I ended up removing the Animatics Smartmotor from the original setup and replacing it with a stepper motor I had on hand, the smartmotor was just a little too dumb for my taste.

The one remaining item I have it to get the THCAD2 setup. I'm unclear on how the encoder mapping works when I have the 7i96s + 7i77 setup together. It appears as though the 7i77 takes encoder slots 0-5, but I also have 6 and 7 listed in halshow and regardless of which I configure the default value that is detected is -22 in plasmac. Seems like I'll have to do a bit more digging...

I'm using QtPLasmaC.

I have these in my *.prefs file:

[PLASMA_PARAMETERS]
Arc Voltage Offset = 3071.8750
Arc Voltage Scale = 0.00797309

Unfortunately my setup (7i96s+7i77) isn't supported in PNCCONF so I've had to assemble everything by hand using various sources, so it's very likely I've messed this up

Do I need to include the calibration values elsewhere as well?

iirc the -22 is very constant (this is while not cutting, FYI)

Thanks!

What does the encoder 6 velocity pin read?