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Hi,
A while back I obtained this great condition mill, and spent a good while getting the original B control and parajust vfd to function. I guess I've had a good few years of use, and learned all that old school stand at the control panel block entry programming system. Thank goodness for CAD systems making it simple to workout profile tangent points and arc centres. What I have learned is the the machine is good, but  for programming prototype parts a bit of a liability, especially if you make changes in the middle of 100 block programme. Not smashed anything, but embarrassed myself.

Always did have a plan to retrofit the control, but now is the time to do it. I know that these old machines have been covered a few times in the forum, but the questions I am bumping into don't seem to be quite covered hence the reason for a new Topic.


My plan is to insert a chassis containing some Mesa boards, and a Raspi 5 in and to make an intermediary interconnection board that accepts all the Hurco edge connectors that go to the B control. From the picture you'll  I've done most of the preparation already. 
The Mesa boards are 7i92T, 7i77D and 7i73  

The sub board accepts the original connectors, and breaks out into solder pads where I can add appropriate wires to connect into the Mesa items. 
My maybe silly idea on this, is that if I don't cut any wires, I can always revert to the historical system, to prove to anyone's  passing grand kids that there is life still in 1980's computing.

I'd like also to use the pots and original pulse generator retained in place in the pendant panel, as well as as the still working fvd and servos etc, in fact everything that's operational and can work with linuxcnc. ( I accept that the encoders will need many more lines and have 2000 cpr ones in stock.)

Question 1 Limit switches
The existing ones are 5volt solid state devices, and the output floats at 5volts, pulled up by a 470ohm resistor in the Hurco control, until triggered where it falls to zero and switches on an LED in an optical isolator which signals the servo to stop as well as telling the operating system that the axis travel has been exceeded.

My initial idea was to connect this output into the 7i77, but I now believe that the field IO terminals TB7/8 won't trigger at only 5 volts, so I propose to use the 7i73 P2 connector, pins IN8 thru' IN15 which are 5 volt tolerant, but with 4.7 kohm pull up resistors.

I'm not the greatest at electrics, so would appreciate your advice.

Thanks

Look mate when the guys were trying to help you with your homing issue you refused to supply your ini & hal files. Do you get it ?

I was just wondering if anyone knew of something.

Who knows?

Perhaps someone else has successfully replaced a THK GSR20T LM Block

That's all.

tech.thk.com/en/products/pdf/en_a01_290.pdf

Just for the record, I never did get the tape to consistently run. Bought a tape emulator from Buddy Maughon at Accurate Machine Tool Serv. Initial issue was some of the 5volt regulators were marginal, so I replaced them all with PSU5 LM323 replacements from ezsbc.shop/.
I had also to replace a number of chips on several of the boards, eg watchdog timer, x axis counter, y axis encoder as the scale had a chip out of it and counted incorrectly, relay optical isolators, then all the tantalum caps on the 2 parajust control boards to get the spindle to run, but in the end, it works accurately as an original Machine and still does. But now started to Linuxcnc it in a sympathetic way.

[FLEX]
TOUCH_FILE_WIDTH = True


[FLEX]
TOUCH_FILE_WIDTH = False


JT

OK, will do so later.

forum.linuxcnc.org/18-computer/54369-use...ernet-boards?start=0
-
Lenovo X220 and T420S are utterly useless for LinuxCNC so stay away from them.
And as usual, there is absolutely no guaranties that any of the ones that work for me, will also work for you. I had 2 of the same Acer laptops, one was very good, one utterly useless, despite being the same model number, but had different processors.

Hallo zusammen

ich bin Neuling auf dem Bereich Ethercat im LinuxCNC. Eine Installation habe ich bereits zum laufen bekommen. Die Ethercat-Geräte werden erkannt. Nun versuche ich das ganze noch im LinuxCNC zum laufen zu bekommen. Stichwort, Hal-File und Ethercat-Config. Kann mir das hier jemand erklären? Das ich das Configfile anpassen muss ist mir klar. Nur was wie und wo? Welcher Eintrag steht für was usw…
ich hoffe mir kann jemand helfen.

ich habe diverse Bechoffkomponenten und Lichuan Drives, Servos und einen All in One Motor.
Warum Lichuan? Ich habe mit diesen schon erfolgreiche Projekte im TC umgesetzt und bin eigentlich sehr zu frieden. Nur im LinuxCNC hab ich noch nicht verstanden.

freundlich Grüsse und schönen Tag 

andypugh wrote:

pncconf does call mesaflash so if you don;t have mesaflash that might explain why discovery is not working.

Does "sudo apt-get install mesaflash" work?

Did you manage to create a config in Debian 12? If you did, then that same config should work in 11.
 

Hi Vector, tommylight and andypugh,

Thank you for the trouble-shooting discussion on Unspecified Error with Discovery option.

My computer is Raspberry Pi 4, Debian 12 Bookworm, the Kernel is Linux picnc 6.6.59-rt45-v8-behai-rt-build+ #1 SMP PREEMPT_RT Sat Nov  2 10:20:46 AEDT 2024 aarch64 GNU/Linux.

I am also able to ping it at 10.10.10.10, and I did have the same error when used Board Discovery.

Failing discovery, I selected:

[
Board name = 7i96s-Internal Data
Firmware = 7i96s_d
]

It appears to work, since I can move to other screens... I was not able to proceed any further, because I don't know what to do next yet.

Then I retry by running sudo apt-get install mesaflash, and afterward Board Discovery works:

[
Board name = Discovered: 7i96s
Firmware = ~/mesa0_discovered.xml
]

I am happy, this is a progress for me. I have read the configuration the HAL parts of the manual. But it still not registered yet... I have to do some more reading.

And also I have to learn how to connect the CL57T-V4 closed-loop motor driver the 7i96s.

Thank you and best regards,

...behai.

 

hello,
i would like to know if it is possible to send me a complet list of a material that you use with refenrences. Because for exemple, i have a lot of difficulty to find a sensormotor and sensordriver Delta B3 750W X/Y, Delta B3 1000W Z and Bosch Rexroth C5 ballscrews with preloaded nuts. If you have a websites to order all materials i'm interessed.
Thank's

blazini36 wrote:

I copied out the Qlistwidget from the touch theme to my qss and it works pretty much the same as the touch them but I noticed the same problem on both......

If you hit a directory with a file name that is too long it will resize the Qlistwidget horizonally and push the scroll bar out of view. Any idea how to fix this?
 

The width is set here based on the width of the longest item. I'm working on making that an ini selection to turn that feature on but I need to fix the touch style sheets sliders to work as expected.

JT

blazini36 wrote:

JT wrote:

Sorry missed one of your questions and yes the touch screen file browser is here
gnipsel.com/linuxcnc/flexgui/touch.html#file-navigator

JT
 
Lol I think were moving past each other here. I see that "theme is checked first". I also have file_lw, I have the browser....that's not the issue.

The thing that is not really clear is that you can't use a qss file and still have any way to use the touch style widgets. It wasn't obvious until I looked in libflexgui and the python file that the THEME is just a premade qss file and the touch style widgets are just properties in the qss.

So I suppose the best way to have custom colors and the touch style stuff is just to copy the touch THEME qss out of libflexgui and stick it in the config directory, point at it with QSS and just modify it, otherwise it won't survive an update. I suppose this is probably where INPUT was going but that's probably a bit more difficult to implement since it's written directly into the main qss.
 

Yes, touch style widgets are defined in the qss file.

You can only apply style to a widget once AFAIK the second time over writes the first time.

I added the themes to the examples so they are easier to find.

I've possibly improved the docs about themes.

JT
 

Wild guess, as I haven't looked at all, but it may be related to the compensation logic (used for backlash etc) - as I remember it's hard coded to allow 200% accels to fix position errors and is used for example for backlash and mapping and could cause such behaviors if it is involved in some way.

Hi,

I feel you pain, buying this kind of hardware as hobbyist through the big reseller in Europe was a challenge for me too. Many reseller aren't really interested in hobbyists.

I ended up purchasing my X/Y/Z servos from this store on AliExpress (seems to be no longer active): topstock.aliexpress.com/store/1155094

The spindle servo which I purchased later is a special high RPM version which nobody had listed online. After asking many sellers I finally got one to add it to their store (ignore the photo in the listing as it's showing the wrong servo): www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007120864062.html

The balls screws where the same story eventually however I was able to make a special order from L-system here in Sweden (l-system.se/) who sold me the ball screws and machined them for me.

Most of the smaller electronic stuff was bought from www.tme.eu which had the best prices and lot's of items in stock.