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LinuxCNC 2.9.1 has been released

(there was no 2.9.0 release)

This marks a major new release of LinuxCNC.

Due to the difficulty of supporting both Python3 and Python2 and
various out-of-date libraries the 2.9 release of LinuxCNC is only
supported in Debian Buster or later, Ubuntu Focal and later and
Rasbian 12 and later. Furthermore we are no longer building any 32-bit
versions of any packages.

This update is recommended to all users of supported systems and
hardware. There may be a final 2.8 release to incorporate new drivers
and features for those unable to upgrade.

Abbreviated Changelog:
(Full changelog at:
github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/blob/v2.9.1/debian/changelog

Merge 150+ pull requests
Adding Limit_Axis Component
Added user space HAL component for publishing HAL values to a MQTT broker.
carousel.comp: Add direct position control for stepgen and encoder modes
Add Mesa 7I94T, 7I97T, 7I76EU, 7i96S card support
Add scaled sum component.
Add anglejog component.
mesa_modbus: New Driver framework
hal_gpio: Generic GPIO driver for any platform supporting libgpiod
docs: Add manpage for emccalib
halcompile: Accept hal pins of type “port”
G71 - G72 updates
Add OutM simple output module support
docs - Hundreds of updates
Fix “userspace” vs “realtime” nomenclature
gladevcp: - Many Updates
glcannon - Many Updates
gmoccapy - Many, Many Updates
hal_glib - Several Updates
halcompile: Add command line arguments to provide compile and link flags
halscope: Several updats
homing: Fix for #2169 introduced #2308.
homing.c: Apply suggested fix for #2629 and #2388 Fix suggested by yuyue2013
hostmot2 bspi: sanity-check that channel echo enable matches receive
buffer present
interpmodule: add interpreter.active_spindle property
interpmodule: fix “speed” property
Issue #1232: Fixed
Issue #1747: Fixed
Issue #2169: Fixed
Issue #2483. Partially ficed
limit_axis: - New component
mb2hal Several Updates
qt5_graphics - Several Updates
qtaxis - Several Updates
qtdagon - 100+ Updates
qtplasmac - 100+ Updates
qttouchy -fix sample config loading error, remove MPG selection buttons
qtvcp - 200+ updates
qtvcp –mdi_line: fix multi axes movement Addresses Closes: #1053251
RS274: M5 default to all spindles.
sims: fix startup issues in axis sims
sims: fix startup issues in qtvcp sims
sims: update and tidy qtplasmac sim

This release contains contributions from the following authors:

ALatSMT Alec Ari Alexey Starikovskiy Alex Lait alkabal Allan Nordhøy
Ambr Enzs Andreas Christoffersen André Litfin Andrew Downing
andrewheeler82 Andrew Kyrychenko Andrii Podanenko andy pugh Arvid
Brodin Asle Næss Benson Muite Billy Soto Bob Bond Bruno Lualdi Bryce
Johnson ButterflyOfFire cascade256 Chad A. Woitas Chadly chris Chris
Morley Chris Nisbet Chris Radek cnc Colten Edwards Csa söl Curtis
Dutton d2inventory Damian Wrobel damiodj Daniel Rogge david Davide
Cerati ddlu ddotldot DerAndere Dewey Garrett D.L Dmitry S. aka D.L D.
Mueller Egor Komogortsev ekam230 Ernesto Lo Valvo freddii Greg Carl
Gunnar Wolf Hakan Kaner Hannah Lau Hans Unzner Håvard F. Aasen Håvard
Flaget Aasen Horváth Csaba htasta Ihor Oliinyk issyvarsano Jan Mrázek
JanneK Jan Roters jb0 Jeff Epler Jérémie Tarot Jerry Trantow
J.M.Garcia John Morris John Thornton Jose Manuel Garcia de Torres
joseph calderon Juraj Adamkovic Kale Yuzik Klaus Naumann Leonardo
Daniel Marsaglia luz paz Mark Markus Mark van Doesburg Martin Kaplan
Mateusz Konieczny Matthew Johnston Matthias Michael Langer Michael
Stellmacher mk00002 Moses McKnight mwork NhanPham nicokid Nicola
Quargentan nicolas Nikita Shubin noel Norbert Schechner oMtQB4 pc179
Peter C Wallace Peter Müller Petr Menšík Petteri Aimonen Petter
Reinholdtsen Phillip A Carter Rainer Stelzer Rene Hopf Rob Clegg
Robert W. Ellenberg Robin Szemeti Roguish root rpm-build russellgower
samcoinc Sascha Ittner Sebastian Kuzminsky simaoamorim snowgoer540
spike Steffen Möller sundtek Sync Tim Blume Tinic Uro Toni Laiho Trần
Ngọc Quân TRothfelder Ulices whatawhiz yohsuke zz912 Александр
Макарчук Дмитрий トトも 大宝剑 陈浩

Thanks for the quick reply TommyLight, I have it plugged in to P1, the led is lit on it, and I have 5v on the ground and supply pins. I ran halcmd, with the board attached and detached, and didn’t see any change in the available number of inputs. Any ideas why?

No, just plug and go.
It is a break out board with good protection for the FPGA.

gardenweazel wrote:

What is happening now, is the machine is homing in the correct direction however, both Y and Y2 axis simply disregards the inductive switches and continues in a positive direction instead of reversing.

 

Add or remove - in front of the
home_latch_velocity
home_final_velocity
Beware that you have to change that for both Y axis/joints at once to prevent racking
-
Another thing related to this, if the same switches are used for home and limit, there should never be a way for the switches to go un-triggered while homing or in use if they overshot, meaning the switch once triggered, must remain closed/triggered up to the end of physical travel. This should be fixed first, probably by adding metal bars.
Just in case, pictures of the switches and how they are mounted.

Hi Folks,
Thank you everyone for your feedback.

So far I am still unable to get my Y and Y2 Axis homed. Very frustrating. 
For both Y and Y2 Axis I have the drives mounted on the rear as I indicated in a previous image.
I have single inductive sensors mounted on each Y Axis. Each Y and Y2 sensors are mounted in the front of the machine at 790mm from the rear of the machine. Only one sensor per axis.

790mm is the absolute max that I can travel in the Y direction. However, after Y and Y2 are homed I need them to move 228mm towards the rear of the machine.

What is happening now, is the machine is homing in the correct direction however, both Y and Y2 axis simply disregards the inductive switches and continues in a positive direction instead of reversing.

Attaching my current config files.
 

Is there anything special required to add a 7i75 card to a 7i76e? I looked on Mesanet.com, but didn't find any firmware to download for this combination?

Running Linuxcnc 2.8

 

Next on the list is to start configuring the custom HAL file a bit.

I used PNCconf utility for the initial setup and I'm very positively surprised of how good it worked both for generating the initial configuration but also for going back and changing it. I need buy whoever developed that utility a beer.

I'm manually going to add the following parts now initially but I'm sure there a more to come later.

• Connecting the alarm signals from the drives to the joint.X.amp-fault-in for each axis
• Modify the e-stop loop with the latch function so that LinuxCNC can trigger the external e-stop but it can only be reset using the physical button on the control panel (planing to use the example DSS kindly has posted here )
• Use the ready signal from the drives together with a 3-way AND component using logic component to prevent motion.enable from being enabled if the drives are not ready (thanks to andypugh for pointing me in the right direction in this thread )
• Add run/step pause/resume support using two buttons based on the example posted by BigJohnT here )
• Add a oneshot function to clear and codes on the drives when coming out of e-stop

This is my first LinuxCNC build so any feedback is very welcome both regarding the hardware and the software setup as I'm sure that I still have much to learn.

Hi everyone,

This is my first topic in this forum but I've been lurking here for some time reading up on all the nicely documented retrofits and conversions of various machines. I thought it was time present my own CNC conversion that I've been planing for quite some time and give proper attribution to all the helpful people who's posts here on the forum have been of immense value to me.

The machine I'm converting is a larger type of Chinese mill branded and sold by Optimum as the MH50V model.

 

I originally purchased the smaller MH35V model but I had to wait forever for it to be delivered and when it arrived it had lots of defects so in the end the local Optimum reseller compensated me by exchanging it for the larger MH50V model. This was my first mill so it's been a learning experience and I'm really glad I started with manual milling to get a feel for how it should be done.

As with many Chinese made manual mills the machine left a bit to desired so over the past two years I've trammed and shimmed the machine, extended the table, added polycarbonate chip guards, flood and mist coolant along with a Android based TouchDRO with glass scales (more on these mods are available in my thread at The Hobby Machinist ).

 

For manual milling this worked really well and I've done quite few billet parts for my motorsports related hobbies, even some larger parts.

 

 

However after getting the hang of manual milling I realized that it was time to move on to more advanced parts and that CNC was the way to go. Initially I looked at purchasing a brand new CNC mill but I realized there was very few if any options that met the size requirements I had.

The machines were either very small or very large. Also the vendor lock-in effects and various silly software licenses involved with many commercial CNC control systems appalled me after working for 20 years as an entrepreneur in Open Source software development.

In the meantime I also came across this very thorough German thread by Lukas Fässler who is doing a top notch rebuild and CNC conversion of the Optimum MH50G model: forum.zerspanungsbude.net/viewtopic.php?t=43263

I also noted that a company called Mobasi sold preconverted machines of the same model as mine ( link ). I tried contacting them so see if they would sell me a retrofit kit but I never got a reply.

However at least this showed me this machine must have some potential in CNC form if central lubrication and ball screws are added. So I began researching what parts that could be suitable to use. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel instead I tried to go with proven parts as far as possible based on what had worked well for others on this forum and other CNC related forums.

After planing this for several months I finally started ordering parts at the end of this summer and shortly afterwards the packages started arriving.

 

 

The recipe of parts I settled on was essentially the following:

• Mesa 7i96S + Mesa 7i84 (I would have preferred a 7i76E but they were not available)
• Delta B3 servos 750W for X/Y and 1000W for Z
• Bosch Rexroth C5 ballscrews with preloaded nuts
• ABB SSR10 e-stop relay
• Schneider Electric LP4K0910BW3 low power/low noise contactors
• Eaton M22 buttons for e-stop/reset, jog, pause, resume
• TDK-Lamda RSEN2030L and RTEN-5040 EMC filters
• HP Elitedesk 800 G2 (avoid this computer)
• A vintage Intel DQ45EK motherboard and Q9550S CPU
• ASUS VT229H touch screen monitor
• Eldon MAS0608030R5 enclosure

Hand over the E-stop button when testing this:
If you want the machine to home at the back side or far end of the joints/axis, and stay there after homing, set home at max your machine can do on that joint/axis and set home_offset to something small so it just backs off of the home switches.
If you want it to home at the back, but move to 0,0 position after homing, set HOME at 0 and HOME_OFFSET at max your machine can travel for that joint/axis.
Might be reversed, cant recall what was what back when i used this.

I probably should have mentioned this and totally forgot.

My motors are actually on the back of my Y, Y2 and X Axis.

I suspect this is where the confusion plays out.

I noticed this for the -320 value for STEP_SCALE. The scale is correct based on the drives being on the back of my unit.
So, how would I handle this scenario?

 
 

If one of the joints did not stop, change the direction of home_latch_velocity for that joint by adding or removing -
Might also need to do the same for home_final_velocity

Okay doing much better now!
I changed my ini file as suggested by @PCW. Movement of "Y" and "Y2" worked with only one exception, "Y2" decided
to not stop at the sensor. Mashed the E-Stop button and all is well.

Next, I'll do a diff on the files that @djdelorie attached and see if I can correct.

Thanks again for the feedback!

You have X and Y axis set as 2 and -2, that is the same thing so it will try to home both at the same time, subsequently requires moving 3 joints. Probably this causes issues, but has to be confirmed.
In general, homing sequence is
0 for Z axis so it moves up as not to hit stuff when homing other axis
Other axis can be set at will, but when using tandem axis a - sign must be added, so
1 for X axis
-2 for tandem Y axis, both joints
3 for A axis
--
So just change X axis to 1 in home sequence and try again.
-Edit
you can have the same number for any and all axis in home sequence, so you can have all joints/axis set at 0, or 1, or 2, does not matter and LinuxCNC will happily home all at the same time, just the tandem axis/joint will probably not like that so homing only tandem joints should be used, or in your case, you can have all but Y axis set to 0 or 1 or 2 just not the same as tandem axis.
The numbering is very easy to follow, 0,1,2,3 etc, except tandem axis gets a - in front, so to have a standard XYYZA machine home, 1,-2,-2,0,3
standard XXYZ -1,-1,2,0 or -2,-2,1,0 will work.

I have the same hardware as you do, so for your reference, I'm attaching my config files.
Note: I ended up homing *away* from the limit switches to avoid most of the "hit limit while homing" errors.
 

For testing I think it would be better to eliminate the simultaneous homing of X and Y,Y2
say homing d sequence:

-1 for Y, Y2
2 for X
3 for Z
4 for A

And solve the X on home switch issue