7i97t retrofit

  I’m trying to retrofit an old plasma with a 7i97t and I’m having a hard time getting things working.I can’t find the brand of the servos or drivers, but I do have most of a manual and the bob for the drivers says automation direct.The servos worked before I started my retrofit.The encoders seem to work fine in linuxcnc.They spin if I give them analog power.But they just slowly drift when enabled, regardless if they’re wired to 7i97t or not.If I connect my multimeter to the 10v analog while they enabled and try to jog them, I don’t get anything.I tried tuning a bit, but it doesn’t seem like they getting any input.I assume either I wired something wrong or I configured something wrong.wiringThe 7i97t manual referencing analog survo drive interface asks the drives common or gnd signal to be connected to the 7i97t power gnd. I didn’t this. Is the 7i97t power gnd p3? The drives bob has analog ground, digital ground, field ground, encoder ground, and shield ground. I guess the digital ground is the common, but I’m not sure.Speaking of grounds, my power supply’s ground doesn’t ground to the frame. Should it? The 7i97t grounds to the frame with a bolt. the 10v analog twisted pair shield grounds to the shield ground on the drives bob, which seems to ground to frame. The other end is not grounded.I only power I have to the 7i97t is 5v to p3 and 24v to tb4 i/o’s.I used mesact to configure. I’m sure there’s plenty I did wrong in this step. The minimal descriptions were not enough for my limited understanding. Instead of confusing everyone with my logic, I’ll just attach an ini.I did notice the tuning tutorial Hal scoping analogout, but I only have pwnout. Not sure if that’s relevant.Any help would be greatly appreciated.  

Failing to get any results trying to follow the tutorial you posted is the reason I started this thread.
It seems like the drives are not getting 10v analog from the 7i97t.
I tried setting the follow error to 100 and putting my multimeter on the 10v analog on the 7i97t while I am holding the jog button and I get a steady .00v.  

I just tried setting it up with pncconf wizard and now the drives are getting 10v from the 7i97t. They aren’t drifting and they’re responding to jog commands. 

I was going try to edit the mesact derived .Hal files using the new pncconf config as a guide, but they’re just too different for me to feel like I’d succeed.

should I abandon mesact and just focus on pncconfig? I hesitate to go that route since pncconfig doesn’t recognize the board name. I used the discovery option but I’m not sure if I’ll end with it being fully functional or buggy.
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Can you post the hal/ini files made by mesact?
That would help diagnose the issue so mesact can be improved

With a pncconf created file, make sure you set the PWM offset mode true:

setp   [HMOT](CARD0).pwmgen.00.offset-mode 1 # offset mode so 50% = 0

 (for all PWMgens, not just 00)

Also for best ripple/resolution, follow the  PWM guidelines in the 7I97T manual.

I originally couldn’t connect at all to the 7i97t till I updated mesaflash to 3.5.9 and installed mesact 2.1.4.
I also tried changing the hm2_eth static address but I don’t think that worked. 
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Obvious missing bit (in red)

net joint.0.output <= pid.y.output
net joint.0.output => hm2_[MESA](BOARD).0.pwmgen.00.value

Awesome. I looked some more and found
net joint.0.output => hm2_[MESA](BOARD).0.pwmgen.00.enable
missing

and these were the same for both the x and the y, so I numbered appropriately.

setp hm2_[MESA](BOARD).0.pwmgen.01.scale [JOINT_​​​​​​​1]SCALE
setp hm2_[MESA](BOARD).0.encoder.01.scale  [JOINT_1]ENCODER_SCALE
setp hm2_[MESA](BOARD).0.pwmgen.01.output-type 1 #PWM pin0

And it seems to be working great now.

This velocity one was missing too, but I didn’t add it. Should I?

net joint-0-vel-fb <=  hm2_[MESA](BOARD).0.encoder.00.velocity

I can’t believe you got back to me and helped me out so quick on the weekend.
I really appreciate the time and the knowledge you guy’s are putting into helping whoever needs it.
Thanks

Argh this is great, I'm having exactly the same issue (set up 7i97t with MesaCT and have no analogue out)

Can't wait to get out there and try this in the morning :-D.