Brother TC-225 / TC-229 adventure!

ihavenofish wrote: any thoughts on if this could be deciphered and made to talk to linuxcnc?

It _could_ be. I have used a realtime serial link between an Arduino and the UART component in a custom Mesa bitfile.

You would need to write a custom HAL component (you can use halcmompile) to assemble HAL pins into data bytes.

thanks, thats a start: "it is possible". now we just need to find out how

is this something the mesa 7i74 8 port serial board would be used for? or is it not that straightforward.

in the meantime, i did turn that machine on last night, and the drives arent getting power (contactor not engaging), so i need to determine whats wrong there, and see if we can get this thing fired up and working under its stock control. i wish i had an electrical manual for this thing.

ihavenofish wrote: is this something the mesa 7i74 8 port serial board would be used for? or is it not that straightforward.

The 7i74 would be an option, but is only a hardware interface which converts the signal voltages. My Arduino connection was wired pin-to-pin as both sides were 5V.

There is a very simple example of a Mesa UART driver in the linuxcnc distribution:
github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/blob/master...ivers/mesa_uart.comp

(ignore the "bspi" word in there, copy/paste error)

well, at least one of the drives seems damaged in the tc229, so, all this serial stuff might be for nothing, and ill just buy new/used drives/motors.

gotta see what i can obtain inexpensively. hmm.

yup, all drives are dead. i got the wiring diagram from the brother distributor, and its become clear the last owner tried to change it from 380v to 220v with some transformer meddling, and failed.

so, that answers that.

on the bright side, the TC225 (analogue machine) turns on, jogs, and generally seems to work. so i think im changing my plans around a bit. i will use the tc225 as is for the moment, and convert the TC229 by buying new servo drives and whatever else it needs. so now, to find some analogue drives that will work with the sanyo motors, and not cost alot. the spindle is the hard one, 3.7kw. eep!

No eBay APP ID and/or Cert ID defined in Kunena configuration

ihavenofish wrote: now, to find some analogue drives that will work with the sanyo motors, and not cost alot.

Try eBay. This seller always seems to have a lot of servos and drives: