Hydraulic press brake control

So after your comments on encoders I'm thinking SSI absolute encoders would surly make things simpler. But that means getting a different board to read ssi. changing them out on the motors is no problem but for the cylinders I would be making a belt/pulley system to make them linear as absolute linear scales are way out of my budget for this. I'll have to call and see if the 7i96 will work with a 7i74.
here is a link to the encoders I've found.
encoders

also wondering if you couldn't call a single axis out in gui. pass that command to two separate axis (the cylinders) in velocity mode. hijack the velocity out command number (say max vel 65) into two position commands for the steppers. wouldn't linuxcnc keep the two cylinder axis in sync by adjusting the velocity for each cylinder witch would in turn change the position of the steppers running the valves? Or I'm I talking crazy?

Hi Steve,

I prefer you keep your hardware as it is now.
We make this working !

If you got the glass scale's working and have halmeter input, you pass can me your config files, i like comment's in your
config file's, that make's life easyer.

Okey.

For your cilinder movements we make a component.
The 2 stepper motor's will control 2 cilinder's.

The sychronisation will take place when we are pressing in full speed and in lower speed and with press hold time.
The component will read your glass scale value's. If one is behind, then the stepper valve of that cilinder wil move a little bit in degrees to compensate.

So don't worry about that.
The finetuning of your setup parameters will be done in the linuxcnc gui, and you can save this parameters in the gui.
So it will be easy.

A quick question.
With your 7i96, are you using Debian?
Was it difficult to configure?
Is it supported by PNCconfig?
Or would I need to go to yet another software platform
thanks
jOe

I am using Debian with 2.7 and a component for the ssr's that PWC helped me make. There is no support in the pnc config just yet. You could use a different board in the pnc config and then just change the board info in the hal. I have a working 3 axis plasma cutter running on the 7i96 and can give you those file's including the comp if you like. otherwise you need to use the version 2.8 from the master to get the ssr's running. I'm probably going to switch to that myself and ditch the comp.

Thanks. Much appreciated. I will be making the call to switch to the 7i96 in the next couple days. I have a couple more things to try on the 7i76 before I give up on it. I will get back to you.

I've got numbers and motors moving in this hacked up config. I did not connect the motor encoders to make them closed loop yet as I was not sure how the comp is going to use them.
Attached is my hal and in.