[newbie] Conversion of 3 axis mill to linuxcnc

Dear linuxcnc people,

I own a cnc 3 axis milling machine that I'd like to convert to linuxcnc.

I'm looking for advice for the most sensible way of doing that.


Note I'm mostly inexperimented with CNCs but willing to learn.


Here's how the machines is built :

First, you can see some pictures of it and its inside here:
charles.goyard.free.fr/cnc-mill/doc/photos/

along with the manuals of the drivers I could find on the internet:
charles.goyard.free.fr/cnc-mill/doc/

- there a PC running a proprietary software on Windows XP.
- there a PCI board: sensoray 626 that interfaces the software to the amplifiers and end stops switches.

- each axis is made of a servo motor and a pwm servo drive.
The motors are Movinor MR40 or like.
The amplifiers are Infranor MSM1208
There is a power supply for these.

- the tool holder is a Kollmorgen AKM23D-ANBNR-00 servomotor. It's driven by a Servostar 300 drive.

- there is a kind of remote for manually operating the cnc. This is not a must-have.


I have yet to identify the exact wiring going from/to the sensoray board.


For what I understand :

- the sensoray 626 has a linux 2.6 driver (sources on my ftp), but is
not supported by linuxcnc. Sensoray is out of business it seems.

- the Infranor MSM1208's want an analog differential voltage for speed/direction setpoint.

- the Servostar 300 also wants an analog differential voltage for speed/direction setpoint.

So my options are :

- add support for the sensoray 626 to linuxcnc. This can be hard, I don't know.
- replace the sensoray with an already supported interface board. It
seems the Mesa 5l23+7l33 has analog out similar to the sensoray 626,
so this could be an easy route.

For people in France, the machine is located in Montreuil (Seine Saint-Denis).

I saw the ProjectSheetCake page and it's very helpful.

Comments, remarks, ideas, advices are most welcome.

Again, I'm willing to learn.

Thanks for reading,

Charles

If you have source code to a driver there should be enough information write a linuxCNC
driver for the Sensoray PCI card, maybe even as a comp (which would be a lot easier to debug than a driver)

Hi,

thanks, I'll explore the comp way !

The kernel driver is there: charles.goyard.free.fr/cnc-mill/doc/sens...26/s626-1.0.3.tar.gz (I got it from the Internet Wayback Machine).

It has been written for 2.4 kernels but builds and loads with 2.6 too. (but fails at 3.*).

I' ll see what the driver exposes and come back to you in a few days for a new whole lot of questions .

Thanks,
Charles

cgo wrote:

The kernel driver is there: charles.goyard.free.fr/cnc-mill/doc/sens...26/s626-1.0.3.tar.gz (I got it from the Internet Wayback Machine).

It has been written for 2.4 kernels but builds and loads with 2.6 too. (but fails at 3.*).

I have just built this driver on a 3.5.7-rtai kernel

The build failure was from an old define DMA_32BIT_MASK line 1029 of s626drv.c
The pci functions have changed a bit since this was written, substituting DMA_BIT_MASK(32) gets it built.

But of course I have no way of testing it and don't know if of itself it is workable

regards

ArcEye wrote:

I have just built this driver on a 3.5.7-rtai kernel

The build failure was from an old define DMA_32BIT_MASK line 1029 of s626drv.c
The pci functions have changed a bit since this was written, substituting DMA_BIT_MASK(32) gets it built.

Thanks for looking at it ! That in fact would ease my tests, because my main computer runs ArchLinux and has a 3.13 kernel.

But in the end I think the cnc computer will run the linuxcnc distro, I guess it will save me a lot of trouble, being a beginner with CNCs and not up-to-date with RT kernels.


I read through the comp documentation (which is excellent), and it seems I will be able to write a driver quickly.

Thanks
Charles

Hi all,

just an update to note my progress.

Only today I could take some time to work on the mill. I installed the ubuntu/linuxcnc OS on the mill computer, and built the s626 driver. I could run the s626demo program and it works.

Next step is to figure out what IOs are assigned to what. I have no wiring diagram for my machine :-/.

This will take a few days before I can begin writing the driver.

Also I noticed there's a alpha COMEDI driver for the s626. At the moment I find the vendor driver is better, but in the end I might do both.

I'll keep this thread alive !

Do you know if he ever got the s626 card to work?

I have a cnc Router that uses the sensoray 626 card and would like to know if anyone has been able to get it working?

Hi,
sorry, I moved and don't have access to the CNC anymore
Good luck!
Charles