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I need hardware suggestions.  There seems to be a gap in my knowledge, and in my research.

I just got a new CNC router, and it came with a Grbl-based controller.  I always used LinuxCNC in the past on my DIY machine, and I can already tell that I'll probably be happier if I switch to LinuxCNC on the new one.

The most recent incarnation of the old machine was driven by a Raspberry Pi and a Mesa ethernet card.  The Mesa was connected almost directly to the limit and estop switches, and the step/dir lines went to a quad stepper driver board I got from Sparkfun a long long time ago.  The wiring was a horrible rat's nest of jumpers running between pin connectors glued upside down to a plank.  (I'm not exaggerating.) And I don't want to use the Sparkfun board again, for various reasons.

At some point I'm going to want to use the Mesa card with the new machine.  But what I'm picturing, that I don't have, is the "interface" board.  It needs to take 24V power, and have 3 or 4 of those little 16 bit stepper driver modules.  And it needs to have a bunch of screw terminal strips, set up to logically simplify the 6 or 7 pairs going to switches, the 3 or 4 connections to the motors, and all of the interconnect to the Mesa.  Basically what I want is an XYZ CNC router breakout board, with drivers.

But all I can find is complete controllers:  all of what I described, hardwired to an ATMega328, or ESP32.  Or, all of what I described, in the form of an Arduino hat.  Better, but still not very Mesa-friendly.

Can anyone point to the product I'm looking for?  Or tell me (nicely what I should be looking for instead?
 

Well, that thread helped me before but i somehow did not notice the "Basic Mill Config Using hal_gpio" ...would have saved me a lot of time... anyways - works fine now - Thank you!

forum.linuxcnc.org/9-installing-linuxcnc...only?start=10#321296

WTF would you use AI ?????????


BTW Just about everything to do with the Rpi5\4 images is in the thread linked above, rather than waste time with AI read something, a lot of work has and is going into that thread.

Hi, i have a similar problem with my RPi5 and GPIO but I think I/(the AI that helped me) screwed up with the .hal-File. Do you (or anyone) mind to put your working .hal here so I can see how it is done?

Hi folks,

The time has come!

I've owned a Bridgeport VMC760 for the last 4 years. It's been used in my prototyping/fabrication shop here in Australia. The Heidenhain 370 control and Siemens drives have served me well in this time, up until yesterday, when one of the servo drives went bang.

While I'm looking into replacing this drive, I'm also entertaining a retrofit. The machine is a 97' and I fear that I'll be tipping further money into the those drives at some stage. I've never tackled a retrofit of this level, but I've had experience building CNC machines in the past with my business. A couple of one-off 3/4 axis machines for client's specific manufacturing and a home-brew 'Datron' like router we used heavily before the VMC (and still use for high speed spindle applications).

Ideally the retrofit would look something like this:

New axis servos and drives (Interested in Leadshine's newer offerings, but I've had good experiences with DMM, Delta's and Clearpath in the past)
New spindle motor and drive (I've been looking at SVC VFD and encoders to handle orientation, rigid taping etc)

Preference to Ethercat communication for flexibility and wiring
Linux control with a touch screen and a few machine specific buttons up front
Full closed loop control on all axis
Very interested in running this from a Pi5 

Ideally retain the original auxiliary control boards (the boards running the contactors for lube, coolant, tool change etc)
These boards look like the take simple logic signals from the Heidenhain.
Retain full operation of the carousel tool changer. Fairly typical Geneva drive style of the time with AC motors and inductive sensors.

The major gaps in my knowledge (I'm sure there are plenty to be honest) are regarding the following points:

I've never worked with Ethercat, but flexibility and lack of wiring are intriguing. Can an Ethercat system run full closed loop control?

Spindle sytem. Originally this machine had 9kw of continuous (11kw peak) power and 76Nm of torque (93Nm peak), 6000rpm max. I'd like to keep such performance. Is a large SVC VFD AC setup with linux/software based spindle synchronisation the right avenue?

Running LinuxCNC on a raspberry Pi. I've only every run it on old scrap PC's with parallel ports back in the hobby days. Latency was always an issue!

I understand most people would suggest binning the machine or just fixing what's there. CNC machines, even on the secondhand market are not as plentiful or cheap here in Australia. It's a decent sized machine that's produced some great work for us in the past and most importantly, it's already in our workshop!

I'll post some pictures when I'm in the workshop later today.

Any input on these topics is very welcomed and appreciated!!

Thanks,

John
 

Hi All
Please can someone suggest next steps to try to get this to work.
I am a novice at this, so it must be something obvious, it’s just not obvious to me

Please see hal, ini, io attached.
I have a gantry X Y Y Z (two y motors)
I am using a Mesa 7i92TM connected from P1 to a Mesa 7i76U.
I have tried latest linuxcnc images on both Raspberry pi4 and on Intel NUC, and get the same outcome.
I used current version of mesact

The Linuxcnc dro counts on the screen, but the actual motors don’t move.
It looks like It counts in all axis until the software limits are reached, then errors.
When switched off, you can move gantry by hand in any direction.
When switched on, the gantry is rigid.
Stepper drivers are all DM556T.
Green led shows on all four of the stepper drivers (no red led on any of them)
I have wired from 7i76u to stepper drivers in differential mode, and in single ended mode with common ground, it made no difference, no axis moved.
The watchdog led in middle of Mesa 7i76U is green, and flashes approximately every second.
I have four inputs. Limit switches on the x and z axis, and proximity sensors on both ends of y axis.
In halshow, all four inputs are yellow, and go red if you trigger any of them.
Please can you suggest where to look next, or what config changes to try.
Many thanks

ErwinCNC wrote:

Hello
I put my pi 5 into operation yesterday.
Unfortunately I get the locale error with Pconf

I tried to use the same settings as you.
My keyboard is german

Do you have an idea?
 

I *think* you have to set the localle etc from menu-config - mine was not set for me.

If you're going to use a CM5 & carrier board you'd be crazy not to use an NVMe drive. It's fast, like really fast. I use one with mine Rpi5.

I have a LinuxCNC image running on a CM4/eMMC, so it should also work on the Pi5.

Hello
I put my pi 5 into operation yesterday.
Unfortunately I get the locale error with Pconf

I tried to use the same settings as you.
My keyboard is german

Do you have an idea?

Hi, I got my latest image working. In /boot/broadcom under config.txt, you need to comment out the line that enables SPI: dtparam=spi=on -> #dtparam=spi=on.
Then you can use GPIO7 and GPIO8.

You do not need to load hal_pi_gpio, it doesn't work on PI5.

The good news is that you don't need it, either.

Chef_2 wrote:

Uhi, das ist ja süß... all in one.

Ja viel können muss das nicht... Es handelt sich um eine Drehmaschine...
 

Willkommen im Forum,

die Aussage finde ich viel zu allgemein, es kommt auf die Drehmaschine an, wie diese ausgestattet ist.
Meine hat zB. nen Werkzeugrevolver mit Überwachung der Position, Glasmaßstäbe in X und Z,
programmierbarer Reitstock/Pinole, Spindelencoder, Bedienpanel, Minimalmengenschmierung.
Weiter geplant, Taster zum automatischen Vermessen der Werkzeuge.
Du siehst, da kommen eine Menge IOs zusammen, "nur" für eine Drehmaschine 

Hier gibt es sehr viele hilfsbereite und schlaue Menschen, man muss nur ordentlich Fragen.


Gruß
Olli
 

Uhi, das ist ja süß... all in one.

Ja viel können muss das nicht... Es handelt sich um eine Drehmaschine...

Ich habe aktuell dieses Interface:

www.sorotec.de/shop/Interface-Advanced-PRO.html

Mir geht es für das erste erst mal darum, mich mit diesem LinuxCNC zu befassen...

Ich hoffe es gibt hier sehr Hilfsbereite und schlaue Menschen in diesem Forum... ich selber kontruiere und baue Maschinen inkl. Elektrik aber bei Software ist es bei mir dann vorbei.

Moin,
willkommen im forum.

für den Raspberry gibt es auch einen Parport adapter, so könnte man ein altes alte Mach3 BOB vielleicht weiter nutzen:

byte2bot.com/products/parallel-port-raspberry-pi-hat

aber es kommt auch immer darauf an was man vor hat, es gibt da einiges an hardware die man nutzen kann: Mesa, Remora, Rio, GPIO.

Gruß Olli