More StepperOnline CL86Y driver insanity...

Hi all,

Ok, I know I've harped on about this stepper driver, and encoder connections, (or lack thereof) lately. I've been trying to wire up the alarms for all the steppers in series (until I know more about HAL) as a simple test for letting LCNC know there's an issue.

So I have 5 drives, my 24V+ field power runs to the "Alarm +" on the first driver, the "Alarm -" on the first driver runs to the alarm plus of the next driver, etc, etc. which ultimately winds back to an I/O input on the 7i76e. In short, it's a simple "go/no go" setup.

In theory, I want each alarm circuit to operate in a normally closed manner. However, even after Spumco kindly sent me the "hard-to-find-yet-still-incomplete" manual to the reprogramming software, no matter what I do, I'm not seeing ANY closing of the alarm circuit (on ANY driver whether it's in an alarmed state or not). My multimeter shows no conductivity between Alarm +/- on any of them. Reconfigured or still in a factory default setup.

Now I can run the calibration software (albeit incredibly slowly) to reprogram the drivers, but am I missing something? Is the "alarm polarity" setting some badly translated equivalent of normally open or normally closed?

I've looked at the settings 'til I'm practically cross-eyed. Can anyone confirm if I'm on the right track? If so (or even not), what am I looking for? If I'm missing something glaringly obvious, I apologise, but I'm not seeing it.

Good night everyone!
Hamish

To be sure that we talk about the same drive.

I guess you can't wire this drive in line. You need the correct pole. 
Try to wire on drive
pin 3 -> +24V
pin 4 ->  input 04 on mesa card and so on
hal example

harmo wrote:

So I have 5 drives, my 24V+ field power runs to the "Alarm +" on the first driver, the "Alarm -" on the first driver runs to the alarm plus of the next driver, etc, etc. which ultimately winds back to an I/O input on the 7i76e. In short, it's a simple "go/no go" setup.

That will only work if the outputs are normally closed.
Chris's advice is how it is normally done, as you also get the info on what exact drive faulted and can be used with normally open and normally closed switches/outputs/optos.

harmo wrote:

Hi all,

Ok, I know I've harped on about this stepper driver, and encoder connections, (or lack thereof) lately. I've been trying to wire up the alarms for all the steppers in series (until I know more about HAL) as a simple test for letting LCNC know there's an issue.

So I have 5 drives, my 24V+ field power runs to the "Alarm +" on the first driver, the "Alarm -" on the first driver runs to the alarm plus of the next driver, etc, etc. which ultimately winds back to an I/O input on the 7i76e. In short, it's a simple "go/no go" setup.

In theory, I want each alarm circuit to operate in a normally closed manner. However, even after Spumco kindly sent me the "hard-to-find-yet-still-incomplete" manual to the reprogramming software, no matter what I do, I'm not seeing ANY closing of the alarm circuit (on ANY driver whether it's in an alarmed state or not). My multimeter shows no conductivity between Alarm +/- on any of them. Reconfigured or still in a factory default setup.

Now I can run the calibration software (albeit incredibly slowly) to reprogram the drivers, but am I missing something? Is the "alarm polarity" setting some badly translated equivalent of normally open or normally closed?

I've looked at the settings 'til I'm practically cross-eyed. Can anyone confirm if I'm on the right track? If so (or even not), what am I looking for? If I'm missing something glaringly obvious, I apologise, but I'm not seeing it.

Good night everyone!
Hamish
 

You are on the right track.

Chris' diagram and .hal snippet is what I've got in my setup.

"ALARM OUTPUT POLARITY" is the drive setting you want.

Set it to "0" (default is "0") and write to drive, this will result in a normally-closed drive alarm output during normal condition, and open output during a fault.

The buttons at the top of the software screen will immediately trigger the respective function(s). No need to unplug the encoder or some other method - just click the ALM O POLAR OC CLOSE button and it'll flop the drive alarm signal from one state to another.

If you have two computers running (LCNC and a Win for the drive software), you can watch the 7i76e.input-xx and joint.N.fault-not pins change in halshow.

My connection is 24v from VFIELD to ALM on all drives, and ALM- to separate 7i76E inputs for each drive.  Your scheme is like a e-stop chain to a single input if I'm not mistaken.  It's possible that the drive/optos don't like being in a chain. I suggest you test by wiring a single drive to a single input on the 7i76e and see if it works.  If it does, hook up one more drive in the chain (Drive 1 ALM- to Drive 2 ALM ) and see if it vomits.

And yes, the software is painfully slow to load.  It's not just you.

Regards,
Ralph