Advanced Search

Hi everyone, i have an industrial cnc plasma table made by CR Electronic on wich the numerical contol has stopped working and i would like to try and retrofit it with linux cnc and QTPlasmaC interface..
it has 3 axis for the usual X,Y,Z movements and then an additional axis named "K" that is basically a slave to the X axis. it is a tray connected to the air extraction/filtration system that travels underneath the table to catch all the sparks and fumes made when cutting.
it has servomotors on all axis with analog/digital drives controlled with  +/-10V

i have a few question that i'd like to ask before getting started with the retrofit:

What board should buy?
since it has the analog drives i think the ideal board for this retrofit would be the the Mesa 7i97T  combined with a THCAD2 for the THC control.
the plasma currently has a proprietary board wich handled the thc control and the Z axis motion. also it has ohmic sensing and torch breakaway detection. the voltage signal comes from the plasma generator wich is a Hypertherm HD3070 and outputs direct plasma voltage to the thc control, so i'll have to put a high voltage resistor prior to the THCAD2 board.

Do i need 1 or 2 THCAD2 board?
i've read multiple topics about retrofits on cnc plasma tables on the forum but can't figure out if i need to get 1 or 2 boards to combine with the 7i97T Board. can the 7i97T take the input from the plasma voltage to control the THC? or do i need to use the THCAD2 board an then connect the frequency output to the 7i97T? also since it has ohmic sensing and torch breakaway detection wich are 2 wires that trigger two different things, when the torch breakaway circuit opens it senses that the torch disconnected from it's magnetic base and for the ohmic sensing it had another wire on wich when the torch touched the metal plate it closed a circuit and sent the signal to the old thc board that the metal plate was found and the zero was set. can the torch breakaway wire and the ohmic sensig wire be connected directly to the 7i97T board or would i need another THCAD2 Board to have these 2 functions?

Z axis motor:
the old cnc control THC board controlled the Z axis motor wich is powered by 24VDC and since i will be removing that board i won't have a driver for that motor to use, i wanted to replace it with a new servomotor and i've seen the "stepperonline" 100w 230Vac servomotor with his dedicated analog drive,  would that be compatible to be controlled by the Mesa 7i97T? i'll add a picture and the manual to that. 

How to wire the analog servo drives to the 7i97T?
i've read multiple times the manual for the 7i97T board but i'm struggling a little bit to wrap my head around how i should connect the motor drives to the I/O board. i have all the wiring diagrams of the machines wich are very detailed so i've been able to locate all the encoder wires plus the +/- 10v signal and 0V. i still have to understand how to connect the drives to the board correcty.. it seems to have a circuit on the X and Y drive wich is 24VDC generated by the drives for the drive enable signal. i'll add pictures at the end of this topic.

Are all of the current motor drivers on the machine compatible with the 7i97T?
the X and Y axis use the same model of motor driver wich is a TDE-Macno DMBL7 i'll add the manual for that at the end of the topic.
the K axis has a Axor industries mini magnum  MM230T 6/12 drive, i'll add pictures of that too.
this is the new Z axis motor and driver that i'm looking to get. Motor: A6M40-100L2A1-M17 Driver: A6M40-100L2B1-M17 i'll attach the manual and a few pictures of this too. 

Is a Raspberry PI5 suitable for the application?
i wanted to make sure before buying one that the Raspberry PI5 is suitable for my application or if it would be better to get a normal pc.

Thank you in advance for the help.



 

fenton06 wrote:

Looks like the Trixie issues repo got nuked, does anyone know what happened?

Mental health issues.

Looks like the Trixie issues repo got nuked, does anyone know what happened?

Yes, I'm using 2.9.8 from 2.9.4 iso image,

there is a line.

raspi-firmware: missing /boot/firmware, did you forget to mout it ?
...　z50-raspi-firmware exited with return code 1



I'm not using raspberry pi, but N150 PC

What should I do ?

Can you run LinuxCNC from the terminal and copy/paste the errors reported when that happens?
Usually linuxcnc -l should start last used config.

Hi and so much thanks to the people made all the work with the linuxcnc for raspberry pi 5 ,its a great job.
I have downloaded 4.8.9 and it's a great distro working so fine from beguining and today after a week or two the program stop and freze after 5-10 min. I can still run the stepper from the keyboard and the speedometer on the spindle is i ok and run but the rest of the program stop . the only way to go on is a hard rebot and then it start fine and then the problem starts again . Are there people who can help me in the right direction 
I use the byte2bot board in Lathe config. /krister

Hi, I'm very new to CNC, and I have a Maxnc15CL from around the year 2000 and am using a Raspberry Pi 5 to communicate with it using LinuxCNC. The Pi 5 has a parallel port hat from Byte 2 Bot, and I'm able to control the spindle, detect the limit switches, enable the motor encoder feedback loop, and make the motors make noise when I tell the axis to move. I suspect that the motor timing is off, but im not too sure if when I change the values, if it's getting closer or further away from actually moving. If anyone has any ideas on how to make this work, I would greatly appreciate it, and im leaving my hal file and .ini file below. Thank you 

I haven't been on the Forum for ages but today I noticed that someone asked if I could post my RPi 5 ethernet settings on this thread.

I think they have been posted a few pages back by someone else, nevertheless the following wider context may be helpful.

As an aside, my RPi 5 and Mesa setup has worked perfectly since the ethernet issue (below) was fixed.

================================================================
The following is copied from another thread.
================================================================

I ran my RPi 5 and 7i96s overnight and completed 40 million pings with zero errors.

sudo chrt 99 ping -i .001 10.10.10.10 -c 40000000

At the same time in the background, I ran Latency Histogram and two Glxgears. I have attached photos in case anybody is interested in seeing the results.

I’m not sure what to make of the maximum ping time of just over 10 ms.

It seems that "hardware-irq-coalesce-rx-usecs 0" has fixed the issues I was having (aside from the 10 ms issue) at least on RPi 5 * GB with LinuxCNC 2.9.2.

======================================

What is this "coalesce" thing?

Interrupt coalesce settings ( access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/re...ing_networking/index )

"By using interrupt coalescing, the system collects network packets and generates a single interrupt for multiple packets. This increases the amount of data sent to the kernel with one hardware interrupt, which reduces the interrupt load, and maximizes the throughput."

=====================================
My /etc/network/interfaces looks like this:
=====================================

source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 10.10.10.11
hardware-irq-coalesce-rx-usecs 0

=========================== 

Cam -> Raspberry PI3 -> 7Inch Touchscreen -> TCP -> WIFI -> LinuxCNC

www.youtube.com/shorts/sAEmJ-vLgHY
 

I have installed linuxcnc 2.10pre on raspberry pi4. Now I want to update qtdragonHD to latest GIT version. Can anyone guide me how to do it?

Some notes on what has been working for me:

Currently my go-to PLC+HMI setup is LinuxCNC+Node Red dashboard. Sometimes also Glade user interfaces.

I use a combination of Mesa Electronics boards and/or Beckhoff ethercat remote I/O at locations on the machine where you'd normally expect to find a PLC. My logic runs on hal + custom hal components coded in basically C.

Non real-time logic, recipe selections etc. can be configured in node-red pretty much without writing a single line of code unless you want customized functions.

LinuxCNC also has a ladder logic PLC built-in but I cannot inform you of its capabilities, having never used it. I don't care for ladder logic in any form. I have spent way too much time trying to automate complicated machine sequences in expensive proprietary PLC ladder programming software that did not always function the way I expected or wanted.

With node-red for the HMI, all the software lives in the LinuxCNC 'server'. The physical HMIs consist of panel mount touchscreen IPCs booting pretty much any os, autostarting a web browser fullscreen, pointed at the LinuxCNC sever's Node Red web page. The hmi is simply a web page(s) in the server. Placing a duplicate HMI at an additional operator station consists of whatever device you wish, running a web browser displaying the server's web page(s)

I think node-red supports multiple user logins, but I have not tried that feature. In the projects I did so far, I am the only programmer, and the operators don't know how to access the programming back end. Everyone is logged in as me.

On a recent project I set up a router blasting WIFI over the premises. The operator driving the payloader can log into the WIFI with his phone and access the HMI to monitor the processes and switch the machines on/off that he is tending. From the payloader cab.

The entire network is air-gapped from public internet except the server has access to ntp time.

E-stop, safety lockouts, etc are all hardwired with physical safety hardware.

With this system an operator station needs the following wiring:
1. A power cord for the pc.
2. A network cable.
3. A 2 to 6 conductor cable for the E-stop circuit.

When I get more time I'd like to provide some documentation on all this, and some example configs. Currently I'm in the middle of several half finished projects like this, plus a customer running a proprietary PLC I programmed in ladder logic is starting to have random crashes of the PLC, so he is due for an upgrade to LinuxCNC with Glade user interface. This is one more basic machine, so I will skip the node-red. The glade user interface is an app that runs on a monitor plugged directly into the LinuxCNC pc. Then there is a sizable project I'm currently drafting a quote for.

node red getting started:
nodered.org/docs/getting-started/local

I use this for installing node-red:
nodered.org/docs/getting-started/raspberrypi
Although it says raspberry pi, it can be used on an x86/64 pc. During the installation it asks whether I want to install Pi specific nodes, I opt out of that because my x86/64 pc is not a Raspberry pi.

I have been using mqtt messaging to communicate between the LinuxCNC program(s) and node-red. That entails setting up an mqtt server, I have been using mosquitto:
sudo apt install mosquitto

then I run a python-hal component to communicate with node-red via mqtt

Doing all the above configuration pretty much requires a a person to first know his way around linux configuration in the /etc directory extensively.
Default installation of mosquitto and node-red I think listen only on localhost for connection.

Wow, I was going to attach a copy of my python-hal-mqtt connector, but my backup of it seems to be missing. I will have to retrieve a copy from customer's machine as soon as I can.

Hi all,I’m currently having trouble setting up a tool presetter in LinuxCNC. My setup consists of a Raspberry Pi 5 running LinuxCNC, three Leadshine servo motors, and a Beckhoff unit handling the toolsetter input.

The main issue is that when I press “Set Tool Offset PSO,” LinuxCNC does not apply the current machine coordinates. Also, when attempting to perform a tool height setting, nothing happens.
I’m also experiencing problems with manual tool changes. When using the Unload Tool or Load Tool commands, nothing occurs. The only way I can trigger a tool change is by using an M6 T"x" command, which brings up a popup asking for confirmation that the tool has been changed.I have not yet connected the solenoid valve that will actuate the drawbar. 

I’ve attached my HAL and INI files. Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated. 

Thank you for your response, and also for your subtle sarcasm in calling me ignorant every time I comment or ask for help in the threads you also participate in. But I think it's better to be considered ignorant than to learn nothing, even if you're treated like garbage. What I'm trying to figure out is how to create an .img file of my hard drive's contents without having to reinstall applications that aren't included in the .img file, like the one you created for the Raspberry Pi 4 with Debian 13, which I've already installed on four Pi 4s. After installation, I add other applications and compile some components that aren't included in the official LCN version, and doing all that every time I install the image you created wastes a lot of my time.

If using the RPi Trixie image you will need to update Linuxcnc to 2.9.8.

This will be the situation until late March\early April.

forum.linuxcnc.org/37-international-linu...version-cnc-software

This can be taken a look at