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Hey !
I'm building a cnc mill with a german FS4GM epoxy granite gantry and a Spinogy X22 spindle. It's a small but rigid setup that I'd Iike to control with 400W servos, LinuxCNC and EtherCat.
Since I only ordered the mechanical parts+spindle, I still can avoid some problems (ie latency issues) by choosing the right things on the electronic/control/computer side. Hence this newbie message : 
What servo/drivers/computer/other things-I-still-don't-know-about would you go if you had to get them again ?

Cheers,
Flo

I hope a 5V 2A power supply will be enough for this work.

@tommylight
Sorry for the questions, but I'd like to get it right the first time. I'm not yet that good with various electrical components at a detailed level.
I've read through your other threads and I think I found the right info, thank you very much!!
Are the following components suitable for making a voltage divider? My plasma has a 1:1 arc output.
I'm using a TH-CAD2 in combination with two resistors in series and a 0.1uF capacitor to absorb the voltage spikes. Am I doing this correctly?
What happens if a voltage spike does occur? Will the capacitor fail?
 

I have another question.
Can I connect the start arc and arc OK signals directly to the Mesa board, or is it better to use a relay to protect the mesa board?
Can I route these signals to the plasma cutter through the same cable as the THC?
 

I will try changing the 5V power supply today and update back. Thanks..

Yesterday I tried running the VFD with a potentiometer, but had no luck. I experimented by slowly adjusting the frequency and changing some basic parameters to see if I could get any results. The only thing that seemed to have some effect was changing the V/f pattern.

Thanks! i got it running. i was able control the pins. Weirldy enough i was not able to get the stepgen running. i was not able to see anything on the oscilloscope. i did not plug the 12/24v as i thought it is not needed. I was able to pull both the dir and pulse pin high by inverting it.

Any tips are appreciated, gonna continue working on it tommorow

The /DONE LED (CR7) lighting means a power cycle.

This suggests an issue with 5V power.
 

So i have been running 7i96s with my lathe for around a year now. It is running without any issues till a couple of days ago. I never do any kind of changes to hal or anything. I have been getting this error so much that it is almost unusable now. Upon starting the interface, 80% of the time, it ends up with an error. I have attached the debug file report for reference. 20% of the time it runs but within 5-10 minutes it shows "error finishing read iter = 957938" even during operations suddenly. I pinged my card and ran it for sometime, and saw some packet losses for reasons I dont know. Attached a picture for that too.When i startup, the PWR led stays on, others off. The cr6 and  cr7 blinks in turns sometimes during the error and when the packet loss happens and it doesnt turn off after that. Debug as follows:

Error report created by /usr/lib/tcltk/linuxcnc/show_errors.tcl:

Print file information:
RUN_IN_PLACE=no
LINUXCNC_DIR=
LINUXCNC_BIN_DIR=/usr/bin
LINUXCNC_TCL_DIR=/usr/lib/tcltk/linuxcnc
LINUXCNC_SCRIPT_DIR=
LINUXCNC_RTLIB_DIR=/usr/lib/linuxcnc/modules
LINUXCNC_CONFIG_DIR=
LINUXCNC_LANG_DIR=/usr/lib/tcltk/linuxcnc/msgs
INIVAR=inivar
HALCMD=halcmd
LINUXCNC_EMCSH=/usr/bin/wish8.6
LINUXCNC - 2.9.3
Machine configuration directory is '/home/arijitdutta/linuxcnc/configs/lathe'
Machine configuration file is 'lathe.ini'
INIFILE=/home/arijitdutta/linuxcnc/configs/lathe/lathe.ini
VERSION=1.1
PARAMETER_FILE=linuxcnc.var
TPMOD=
HOMEMOD=
TASK=milltask
HALUI=halui
DISPLAY=axis
COORDINATES=XZ
KINEMATICS=trivkins coordinates=XZ
Starting LinuxCNC...
Starting LinuxCNC server program: linuxcncsvr
Loading Real Time OS, RTAPI, and HAL_LIB modules
Starting LinuxCNC IO program: io
libnml/buffer/shmem.cc 320: Shared memory buffers toolCmd and toolCmd may conflict. (key=1004(0x3EC))
libnml/buffer/shmem.cc 320: Shared memory buffers toolSts and toolSts may conflict. (key=1005(0x3ED))
libnml/buffer/shmem.cc 320: Shared memory buffers emcError and emcError may conflict. (key=1003(0x3EB))
Starting HAL User Interface program: halui
linuxcnc TPMOD=tpmod HOMEMOD=homemod EMCMOT=motmod
Found file(REL): ./lathe.hal
Shutting down and cleaning up LinuxCNC...
Running HAL shutdown script
hm2: loading Mesa HostMot2 driver version 0.15
hm2_eth: loading Mesa AnyIO HostMot2 ethernet driver version 0.2
hm2_eth: 10.10.10.10: INFO: Hardware address (MAC): 00:60:1b:16:88:df
hm2_eth: discovered 7I96S
hm2/hm2_7i96s.0: Low Level init 0.15
hm2/hm2_7i96s.0: Smart Serial Firmware Version 43
board fails HM2 registration
hm2_eth: in hm2_eth_reset
hm2: unloading
Removing HAL_LIB, RTAPI, and Real Time OS modules
Removing NML shared memory segments

Debug file information:
Note: Using POSIX realtime
hm2_eth: rtapi_app_main: Resource temporarily unavailable (-11)
./lathe.hal:9: waitpid failed /usr/bin/rtapi_app hm2_eth
./lathe.hal:9: /usr/bin/rtapi_app exited without becoming ready
./lathe.hal:9: insmod for hm2_eth failed, returned -1
7688
Stopping realtime threads
Unloading hal components
Note: Using POSIX realtime
 

First, you should not actually need mesaflash as the pre-installed firmware on the 7I97T
should work as-is for normal analog drive setups.

You do need a recent LinuxCNC to recognize the 7I97T

In addition, you will likely need to install MesaCT to setup the initial configuration files
as pncconf does not yet support the 7I97/7I97T

There is also a basic configuration file example for the 7I97/7I97T here:

 
 

Thanks for the kind offer. I made good progress , today, on upgrading it by hand.
I think that it is pretty close to running.

It is a hand written configuration so I am not surprised that the script did not work.

Nice work. Yeah, I'm on Axis - 2.8.4 although I'd be happy to hear about your method to set this up.

Have spent a few hours going around in circles trying to get Chat GPT to point me in the right direction. Managed to get a custom tab set up but that's about it - buttons proved problematic for one reason or another. I'll probably wait until I upgrade to 2.9 to try again but that might be a while. Spreadsheet for now..!

*Not my formulas - I found 'em squirrelled away on a Microsoft forum page.

Thanks Andy. The single-line lookahead is the conclusion I've come to also.

Any advice on where to go from here?

Is there an alternative trajectory planner that could be better suited for multi axis? Is PathPilot an option, and can it be modified for more that 4 axes? What would it take to merge the Tormach TP into LinuxCNC? Or is there something other than LinuxCNC that would be better for simultaneous multi axis machining?

How can I make the "Auto Zero" button default to ON?  ON a few occasions where I have not used my machine for a couple of months, I forget to set Auto Zero to ON, and then go down a rabbit hole trying to figure out why my machine is not cutting at the correct Z height.

What is the use-case when you would want Auto Zero to be OFF?

Thanks
John

I used your formulas for calculating the center of a circle and created a widget for qtdragon that does it.
(There's also a Python function that calculates the center from three coordinates.)
You're using axis, so it probably won't be useful to you.

 

I may also try to run the script in terminal and see what I can find out.