Migrating buildlog laser from pport to 5i25

Awesome! Thanks. Flashed and verified easy-peasey.

FWIW, I downloaded the 5I25 UPDATE from Chris's sticky topic and added the dring.xml file to the directory. Then ran it. I think the script has a minor bug: If there's no hm2 directory below /lib/firmware, the script creates hm2/ and drops all the files into it. If hm2 exists, then the script creates /hm2/5I25/ and adds the files there. PNCCONF doesn't seem to see the files in hm2/ so it doesn't produce the expected joy after the first execution but works fine if the user runs it again.

thanks for finding that bug
any thoughts on a screen gui for the laser ?

I've been using axis with a custom panel. It has some controls for monitoring the safety lockout loop and doing my custom touch-off process but is otherwise simple. Just getting that working again is my first priority. I use gmoccapy on my milling machine and I love it. I've looked at the gmoccapy plasma and it's really nice so adapting it to the laser would be the next logical step.

I've gotten through initial configuration but still haven't been able to move a motor. As soon as the system powers up, all the motors on the laser go active and hold. I checked and W1 and W2 were in the 'up' position which I think is incorrect since I'm not using a daughter board. I moved them both down but the system will not boot up like this. System power comes on and fans spin but it doesn't boot. Remove the 5i25 and it boots fine.

All other jumpers are in the up position.

EDIT: Never mind. Seems to be the PCI port not the card. Doh!

' does not boot ' i presume you mean the pc ? check your power supply in the pc , i had a similar problem , i even tried different slots .
PCW chirped up at the time and said check the psu , so i changed it and worked first time

you may need to reverse the sense of an enable pin ( motor enable pin 16 )

does it boot with w1 and w2 up , without any connection to the laser

I've got motors homing and moving (very fast ) I'm starting to work on the laser control next.

However, I found something troubling.

If the linuxcnc is NOT running at all, the laser is firing. The breakout board has a safety interlock circuit so the lid has to be closed and the e-stop button reset, but it shouldn't be firing at all.

I guess this means that pin 17 is high by default. Am I thinking that right? Can it be reversed in the bit file?

you can invert in the hal file ,
but i hazard a guess the best way would be to use the invert jumper for the enable on the laser board
or the board needs a little hack to add a laser disable perhaps joined to the motor enable so that if the motors are not enabled then the
laser wont be either . , moving say the laser relay K1 ground connection to the motor enable , should solve it

but i can see how it's happened the ground side of the relay should be the switched side to the 5i25
slight modification to the pcb and design i think is in order

i have not built mine yet , so this is all purely looking at the diagrams at the moment
perhaps PCW has a better idea ..

The 5i25 outputs (an in fact all of our FPGA card outputs) are high before configuration
and before LinuxCNC assigns pin functions (and after watchdog bites).

This means Active low is a better choice for interface logic, so for example, a
SSR connected from PC 5V to FPGA output pins will only be enabled when linuxcnc is running.

But for safety related signals, (and a high powered laser certainly has safety implications)
its always best to use a charge pump. and not rely on the state of I/O pins at startup.

PCW wrote:

The 5i25 outputs (an in fact all of our FPGA card outputs) are high before configuration
and before LinuxCNC assigns pin functions (and after watchdog bites).

This means Active low is a better choice for interface logic, so for example, a
SSR connected from PC 5V to FPGA output pins will only be enabled when linuxcnc is running.

Could this be used as a general safety thing possibly. In this thread I'm searching for a way to secure my machine during e-stop.
If I used this idea to controll the power to the transformer in my mill I can have an added safety. Then I have to have LinuxCNC running in order to make any functions work. But that is how the mill was designed to work in the first place.

Now what would it take as far as programming and interfacing? I think I have spare pins available when I'm using one 7i77 and one 7i84 (to be replaced with a 7i85 soon to increase the amount of encoder inputs)?

Sorry for hijacking the thread, but this could be used by others than you guys using lasers.....

Anders