Advanced Search

It has been done before. Ethercat is really just a way of controlling your motors and I/O so it does not change anything or prevent you from building a plasma table.
Choose a plasma cutter with a proper CNC interface and voltage divider that does 20:1 or 30:1 division
You will need an Ethercat I/O module for inputs and outputs.
Torch voltage sensing is something the 7i76e/thcad combo does well. the THCAD has a 0-10 volt range with 500volt overvoltage protection
In an Ethercat environment, I would look for a 0-10 volt Ethercat analog input module that has overvoltage protection to 500 volts.(not hard to find)
To give QTplasmac the voltage output, you should be able to scale the voltage using the QTplasmac voltage scale settings.

Another probably more costly way would be to buy an Ethercat encoder input and attach a thcad to it.

Advanced options would be to home using the drive internals and implement torque mode homing to eliminate the need to wire home switches. This would require a custom homing module in linuxcnc. I am not sure if gantry homing would be supported.

Hey Guys,

I have retrofitted a lathe and two Bridgeport Interact Mills using Mesa 7i76e's.  I am happy with the 7i76e and pncconf but due to their availability (or lack thereof) I am considering doing my new 'from-scratch' plasma table build using an Ethercat interface. 

My question is this: If I go down the Ethercat path will I be able to re-use all of the good work that has been done in the plasma area or will I be doing custom builds?  More specifically can I set up a plasma system using Ethercat by modifying .ini and .cfg files?  I am willing to recompile some fork of the main line of development but I don't really want to be on the 'bleeding edge' of the development effort.

Thanks in advance and Happy Thanksgiving!

JH

 

[edit]
Sehe grad, beim Ausprobieren, dass es scheinbar ein Problem gibt mit toggle2nist in Kombination mit halui.

Versuchs mal so:

Dafür gibt es die 'toggle2nist' Komponente:
linuxcnc.org/docs/html/man/man9/toggle2nist.9.html
'loadrt' and 'addf' nicht vergessen

Hallo,

Wie schon geschrieben, ich will die MMS mit einem Taster ein und wieder ausschalten. Mit zwei Taster kein Problem.
Ich habe es mit (toggle) versucht. Hier nein Code.

net mist_on          toggle.0.in      hm2_7i76e.0.gpio.040.in_not
net mist_on          halui.mist.on    toggle.0.in
net mist_off         halui.mist.off   toggle.0.out

Das funktioniert auch soweit, nur, dass wenn ich den Taster das erste mal drücke schaltet der Ausgang einmal ein und dann wieder aus. Danach funktioniert es wie es soll.

Jetzt habe ich noch folgendes versuch was auch funktioniert. Nur dass ich dann beim Starten eine Fehlermeldung bekomme, dass  der Nebel nicht geschaltet werden kann solange der Notaus aktiv ist.
 
setp toggle.0.out 1
setp toggle.0.in 0

net mist_on          toggle.0.in      hm2_7i76e.0.gpio.040.in_not
net mist_on          halui.mist.on    toggle.0.in
net mist_off         halui.mist.off   toggle.0.out

Also beides funktioniert aber eben nicht sauber. Ich kann den Ausgang auch direkt schalten aber dann ist die Anzeige auf dem Bildschirm nicht Korrekt.

Schone Grüß.
 

I managed to get the addressing working for the spindle analogout but spindle doesn't work still. Keep plugging away.
Address is hm2_7i76e.0.7i77.0.3. I never thought of a three until I asked for a error report and it showed me the pins.

I think the analog sserial channel will be 3

To check:

mesaflash --device 7i76e --addr [card_ip_address] --dbname2 7i77 --readhmid
 

I have finally managed to get my 4 step/dir axis working, but still having trouble with the analog servo spindle drive. I get errors for addressing for the output
hm2_7i76e.0.7i77.0.1.analogout5 I have tried with .5. I have tried 7i77.0.2.
it keeps saying anything with that address doesn't exist,

The other part I always mess up is after installing.

so I’m going to config a machine with 7i76eu + thcad-2 (I think, whatever model the currently have). So I need to configure the system with plasmac

i alway alway forget how to set plasmac on the system.