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Well, I think it follows the state diagram up to the point of operation
 

But for sure it isn't perfect. I have noticed multiple homing components around even if I don't use it myself.
Can you add support for PV (Profile Velocity) while you are at it? I made a quick fix for that.
PV is suitable for spindle mode.

You should be able to transition states manually, in halshow for example, using controlword and check statusword.
Maybe that can give a clue to why it seems so grumpy.

I’m reaching out to the forum to hopefully get some guidance.I’ve spent the past several days working through a LinuxCNC setup with a Mesa 7i96S for what should be a fairly straightforward retrofit on a :Bridgeport Series 2

• XYZ mill
• X & Y steppers
• Z servo (knee)
• No exotic kinematics, just a basic mill configuration

I’ve gone through many iterations and changes (largely guided by ChatGPT), and while I’ve learned a lot, I’m currently back near square one. I did manage to get one motor oscillating back and forth, so I know signals are getting through at some level.At this point:

• I do have solid communication between the PC and the Mesa card
• Network issues are resolved (static IP for Mesa, internet via USB dongle)
• Latency issues were addressed by disabling several BIOS features
• Debian installation and networking are now things I actually understand, which is a win

That said, I’m struggling with what feels like a high barrier just to get basic motion. My main question to the community is:

Is it realistic to expect a simple XYZ mill (2 steppers + 1 servo) to at least jog without days of trial-and-error, or is this learning curve typical?

For context, I’m not new to CNC:

• I previously had this machine running under UCCNC
• I had:
  • A 4th axis
  • VFD spindle control
  • Spindle brake
  • Mist, air to the knee, and lube pump
• All of that worked reliably

The only reason I switched to LinuxCNC was:

• I want true rigid tapping
• I’m interested in the QtDragon / QtPlasma ecosystem
• I also have a router and another plasma table I’d like to potentially convert

So this is not a casual experiment — I’d really like to make LinuxCNC work long-term.I’ve learned a lot in the last few days:

• Installing Debian cleanly
• BIOS tuning for real-time performance
• Static networking for Mesa Ethernet cards
• Separating “GUI motion” from real hardware motion
  …but I’m still not confident I understand the correct minimal path to first motion.

I’m hoping for reassurance that:

• This transition is doable
• There is a clean, recommended workflow for initial bring-up
• I’m not fundamentally missing something obvious

Any perspective, advice, or “yes, this is normal / no, it shouldn’t be this hard” would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance,
Mark

The way I would approach this (many ways).

First you need to look at the old controller and pray you see a step and direction text somewhere on the board, wire labels, anywhere.

If so follow the below. If not I'd probably see if I could find the software or manual to program the drives. Maybe chapgtp can help here?

If it's step and direction your life is easy
Step 1. Buy a 7i96 or 7i96s, if doing spindle speed control with a vfd S makes it a bit easier. (If you want to check sanity buy a stepper and drive to verify it works before testing the drives)
Step 2. Test the existing servo/stepper drives to see if they work. If you tore apart the wiring this may take some trial and error.
Step 3. Figure out the screw pitch and run through the pnf config

Finally that spindle looks usable...prob the easiest thing to save. Is it a 3 phase induction motor?

Bob has 5v using usb.
I'm only working with 5v now to get step/dir outputs working.
I will connect the 12v supply to run the spindle.

Hello,
I've spent a few days getting Linuxcnc 2.9.7 up and running with a Mesa 5i25 board, properly flashed and functioning.
My hardware setup consists of 2no X-axis gecko 203V drives, 1no Y - axis, 1no Z-axis, and 1no A-axis.
I have x,y,z home switches, e-stop, and Highspeed Spindle.

I have been trying to get the mesa card to work with a HKD 5 AXIS MACH3 BOB.
Currently i can get mesa to drive the gecko drives and motors if I connect directly (Testing Purposes Only).
I cannot get the HKD BOB to drive the gecko drives and motors.

Does anyone have suggestions?

Thanks,
Orrin
 

Hello,
I already have a Maho MH500 and a cycloidal lathe retrofitted to LinuxCNC, so I do have some practical experience with LinuxCNC retrofits.Now a colleague has approached me with the following idea:
He wants to build a CNC rotary table for his Maho MH600 in order to hob gears (gear hobbing).The idea is a rotary table with an “electronic gearbox”, synchronized to the machine spindle of the Maho.Key requirements:

• Maximum rotary table speed: ~300 rpm
• Servo or stepper drive with a gearbox, approx. 1:3
• The control should run fully standalone
• Only spindle position and spindle speed are taken from the spindle encoder
• The rotary table is synchronized to the spindle via electronic gearing

Questions / design considerations:

• What is the best choice of encoder for this application?
  Probably an absolute encoder? or better incremental for a better dynamic?
• Servo motor will most likely be NEMA 42 size
• Encoder setup ideas:
  • Incremental encoder on the spindle
  • Encoder directly on the rotary table
  • Possibly an additional encoder on the motor
• How should the control and feedback loops be structured for this setup?

I would appreciate any recommendations regarding:

• encoder types and placement
• control loop architecture
• practical LinuxCNC / Mesa hardware solutions for this kind of standalone rotary table

Hello, I'm new to the forum. I have spent the past year and a half building my own CNC mill that runs on LinuxCNC, and it is mostly done now. Except that I can't get it to finish a program because it keeps thinking that the limit switches have been triggered even though they haven't.

I built this mill from scratch. It is made entirely of aluminum plate and extrusions. It has NEMA23 closed loop steppers, SFU1204 ballscrews, HGH20CA linear rails, a 2.2kw 220v 3 phase spindle and 2.2kw VFD, a "5 axis" parallel port breakout board, a Dell OptiPlex 990 with a parallel port card and running LinuxCNC (obviously). For limit/home switches I have it set up to where one limit switch doubles as a home switch, and all six switches are normally closed and in series all going to one input pin. The limit switches are generic micro switches, and the limit/home switches are Metrol CS067B. I have 24V running through the switches, so I'm using a 24v to 5v optocoupler board to bring the signal down to 5v for the breakout board. The Metrol switch wires are not shielded, but because they cost $67 a piece, I don't want to mess with that. The wires for the other switches are shielded.

This is what happens when I try to run a program: I home the machine, import the program into Axis, hit run, and it could be 1, 5, or 60 seconds later that it suddenly stops the machine because a limit switch was supposedly hit. It doesn't seem to happen consistently. I originally had the VFD next to the other electronics in a copper mesh cage, but ended up making a sheet metal box for it and moving it away (and took the spindle cable out of the cable chain that also held other wires). I thought that would prevent any EMI from interfering with the other electronics. But that didn't fix it. I have narrowed it down to an issue between the spindle/VFD and the breakout board. I can run a program perfectly fine with everything on except for the spindle/VFD, so it can't be the steppers or drivers. I have tried running 24v directly to the optocoupler board, bypassing the switches, but it still triggers. I have tried completely bypassing the limit switch circuit by jumping the input pin on the breakout board to ground, and it still triggers. I have spent hours researching this, and I have tried almost everything. I have my VFD in a Faraday cage. I'm using a shielded spindle cable with the shielding grounded at both ends. I have the signal wires shielded and grounded. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

I have spent weeks trying to diagnose this, and now I am only more confused. Part of the problem is that I'm only 18 and I'm not an electrical engineer (I'm not even a mechanical engineer yet!), and I'm learning a lot of this for the first time. I have run out of things to try, and I would really appreciate any help I can get. Thank you in advance!

Hi,
thanks for the answer!
To get the 7i92T working I need at least a "standard" lpt breakoutboard, right? That would be for the steppers. What would I need for a 0-10V signal for the spindle? Can I plug in glass "sensor" into it? (I would not really need it, never had any step losses with my other machine).
Well yes you always have to double check what the KI says, but for programming it helps alot
regards Han

forum.linuxcnc.org/27-driver-boards/4698...7i96s?start=0#252760

I made a lathe with manual control of two axes simulatively, although apart from the servo motor as the main spindle I didn't have another axis as in your Z that could do its thing while these two are moved manually as I understood. maybe something in this topic can help.

Thanks for the answer, but I understand that I have to edit it.
Only the 7i76 card has a different pin arrangement. Otherwise, the pins on P1 are DB25. Fortunately, the pins for the first four axes are identical. I already wrote that, it works without problems.
But while the 7i78 has spindle control, serial interface and encoder for the spindle on pins 05-13, the 7i76 has an output for the fifth stepper motor, two serial interfaces and an encoder on the same pins. That encoder is labeled ENx, unlike the encoder on the 7i78 - it is QUADx. I don't know if it's the same.
So if, for example, I activate the spindle encoder on P1 in pncconf, will it be the same for the 7i78? And further, on connectors P1 and P2 (on which the 7i78 can be physically located), there is no option to set spindle dir, enable. I set this on P7 but I need it to be on P1. Will it be enough to overwrite the IO number and will it work?
Let me not forget, on the P7 pins it is possible to set the direction of rotation for the spindle - two pins, but on the P1 DB25 there is a SPINDIR pin which is one pin. So if I set one pin on P7 to CW and the other to CCW, will it get to the right place on the 7i78?

I have a 7i76eu that I am using on a new lathe conversion. I must have something wrong with firmware or something on the 7i76eu. The configuration is set up with 3 encoders is what it says. I only have one encoder connected to the 7i76 on tb3. It is configured as single ended jumpers w11 w12 and w16 all set to the left position (up in my case). When I look at the inputs in halshow the A signal is showing up as the A signal on encoder 0, the B signal is showing up as the A signal on encoder 1 and the index signal is showing up as the A signal on encoder 2.

What do I have incorrect here. My mesa setup is a 7i76eu with just a 7i73 pendant smart serial card. I have one spindle drive, one encoder that I am using on the 7i76 two steppers and several io.

I downloaded the firmware pack from Mesa. I installed one that just had the 7i76in the name but no other cards. Which firmware should I use in this case? 

Not sure if this is a config or a firmware mismatch issue. Any help would be appreciated.

Hello, everyone. I have a problem configuring a servo from StepperOnline: A6-1000EC. My goal is to control this servo via the python api. It should be possible to position it between 0 and 360° as well as rotation with different speeds.

My first attempt was to configure the servo as an angular axis. Then I wrote a simple python program to control the axis via JOG_INCREMENT and JOG_CONTINOUS. For absolute positioning I switch to MDI mode and send my target position. This works totally fine, but I can't run gcode with this solution, because I can't turn the servo continuous in one direction.

So I tried setting up this as a spindle instead. At first I changed my xml so I can process target-velocity and control-mode. Then I used a mux2 to change the control-mode depending on the use of M3/M4/M5 or M19. This works fine and my frequency drive changes between mode8 and mode9. The spindle control with M3/M4/M5 also works fine, but when I enter a command like M19 R180 Q2 P0 the servo drive throws a fault. When the target position is near the actual position this works, so I assume it is some sort of following error. My bigger problem is, that the actual position of the motor after using M3 for some time is very large, cause it is not restricted to one revolution. Is there a way to change that? At my first attempt using it as an axis I used wrapped_rotary, but that only affected the display, not the actual value.

Does anyone know what I could do, or if there is a better way for the use of an servo as position and continuous motion?

Many thanks in advance

Non-existant user wrote:

PCW wrote:

First, is the a 7I92M or 7I92TM?
 
This is old machine, so it's probably an old board, so it's probably a 7i92M (sans "T").

Just for future reference, the age of machine will have no bearing on whether it's a T or sans T. It will depend on the period the card was bought. History will show the the Spartan 6 FPGA was hard to get at one stage, hence the switch to the Trion device.

In real life, despite what the "maker community" will tell you, a capacitor isn't the end all and be all. Also you'll really need to know the load current,ripple and frequency for determining the capacitor reqired, which will differ from application to application, just mentioning this as a PSA.
What is the best option is a quality PSU, yep a bench PSU is great for testing, a genuine Meanwell or Weidmüller (depending on where you are not as easy to get hold of and a little more $$$) supply wont let you down once installed, I only mention these as these are the ones I've been using for eons, all DIN rail mount. I usually switch the computer PSU on, then the MESA boards PSUs, then the stepper power and finally the servo driver for the spindle. To tell the truth with all the relays (self latching) and stuff the PSU wiring was way more complicated than maybe what is should have been. But each circuit controlling the mains is independently controlled.
Regarding powering the 7i77/7i776 or any other DB-25 daughter I've been powering mine(7i76/7i74/7i73/7i83)by the DB-25 connector, found it to be a simple and solid solution. The 7i73 & 7i83 are also powered by the smart serial cable via the 7i74.

Hi everyone,I’ve recently finished mounting my machine to its base and tidying up the wiring, so I decided to try running a quick program to see if everything was working properly.Machine Configuration:

• Controller: Raspberry Pi 5
• Servos: 3 × Leadshine EL8 servo drives with 400 W motors (EtherCAT)
• Spindle: 1 kW StepperOnline drive (EtherCAT)

The program starts fine, but the machine seems to get stuck at the first G1 command.After doing some reading, it looks like this could be related to the “spindle-at-speed” signal in the HAL configuration.Because I’m using EtherCAT, I’m not sure where this needs to be handled:
Should the spindle-at-speed signal be configured in the HAL file, or Is it something that needs to be set up in the .comp file for the EtherCAT drive?

Any guidance or examples on how to handle this signal within an EtherCAT setup would be really appreciated. when the spindle is running currently I am having no feedback from the drive to record the actual speed ? 

2.9.0. I didn't have a 7i92 with me, so I used a 7i96s as the main card, which turned out to be better because I'm planning two additional axes later that will use steppers...now about mpg, maybe and I have an example to try...but I didn't have any experience with connecting potentiometers for feed and spindle override, and any Hal example would be valuable to me.