sinking or sourcing remote enable kollmorgen drive

Thanks for the confirmation on the tuning. I figured out my problem with the enable. Total noob incident, I didn’t know where the error messages show in Axis, I had the Hal config window on top of it so I could not see the message. I had limit switch error, then I had following error, I've addressed those. I seem to have it enabled now.

thanks

Doug,

Are you controlling the enable with just the Mesa, or are you also adding in any relay logic (as controlled from say an Estop)?

I will be excitedly following your progress as I too am in the middle of wiring up the four Kollmorgen ServoStar CD drives just like yours. I mounted them to the backpanel this evening, and hopefully will have one powered up this weekend.

For the enable, I considered driving it with Estop or just hard wiring it to 24V gnd to always enable and drop out L1/2/3 power with the Estop. Does anyone know if LinuxCNC normally wants to control an enable drive(s) signal?

While I'm not far enough to offer you much advice, I'll add that I came to the same conclusion of using them in velocity mode. My drives should (might) still be in tune as they came on the machine before I got it. I'm hoping I can hook up Motionlink, pull the settings/save & the play with them some before connecting to LinuxCNC. I'll attach one of my Y drive schematics. It's not fleshed completely out, but you may see something useful, or note something that looks like I'm lost. At least it's something that should look familiar to you, and hopefully give you some feedback that you're not alone with the ServoStars.

I'm assuming that you have your encoders wired to C2 (db25) and then are using the C4 (equivalent encoder output) to feed your Mesa card? This is what I have planned, but was wondering if I was on track or not.

Len

Yes LinuxCNC should control the drive enables so it can disable drives when a
following error or other fault is detected. If you have a 7I77, this is normally done
with the ENA+ and ENA- outputs which are a closed circuit when the drive should
be enabled and open when the drive should be disabled. Since the ENA+ and ENA-
outputs are floating switches they can be used for both sourcing and sinking applications

EStop should remove drive power in hardware.

Peter.

Thanks for the feedback. That makes perfect sense about the enable. I'm using your 7i93 with a 7i33TA (quad servo out) & 7i47 (12 ch RS-422 IO). I see the 5V enable output on the 7i33. I'm making an interface board for some of the RS-422 IO so I'll add some optos to interface the 4 7i33 enables as well.

Thanks again.

Len

Hi Len, I wanted to let you know I ‘ve seen your post and when I get home this evening I’ll look over your attachment and make a write up my project so you know where I’m at on my integration.

So glad to know there’s another out there sharing the same unknowns. Servo Star CD drives are discontinued so I don’t think we will get much in the way of factory support, I did however find the Kollmorgen / Danaher repository for this product line. It looks to have the whole history of support papers and firmware. I’ll make sure to get that link to if you haven’t already found it.

-Doug

Doug,

Please send the link, but I think I may have already been there. Although this series is disconnected, when I emailed them two years ago, they were happy to share the download link to Motionlink and were quick to say give them a call if I had trouble getting things to work. I remember being pleasantly surprised at the support level for their older product line. Granted, they still sell a newer version that is very similar.

In the near future, I may want to pick your brain on your experience with Motionlink if possible.

Len