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This is the swivel head that I want to insstall. It comes with Yaskawa servos and digital drives. The rotaries that I intend to install will also have digital drives so I think I will be using the analog drives and servos that come with the machine on one Mesa card, and doing all these more modern stuff on a second card with a 3rd handling all the sensors.

Question: The current setup with the 16hp columbo spindle is about 100ish lbs. This AC head is another 100ish lbs. I wanted to sell the columbo, and just install a spindle that is closer to what I need... about 6hp (max). The machine comes with an air piston that reduces the load on the Z axis servo drive. I'm not sure how much weight it can handle. I image this is a function of air pressure, gaskets, and how the thing is built. If this air lift thing is calibrated right, there should not be any additional load on the Z axis servo, so I'm going to assume that problem away. I sort of have no doubts that the gantry and bearings can take the extra weight... been climbing up there to check stuff out, and its just built solid, don't know what else to say. I think this was welded together as a bridge, and then machined to get a flat surface. I will need some sort of an L bracket and some hackery to stiffen that Z axis. This L bracket will put a moment arm on the linear guides, so I was wondering if I needed a counter weight. I know I will also have to alter the position of the tool changers because the swivel head will push the spindle a little further forward. That's no big deal. I wanted to add more tool holders anyway.

Do you guys see any major concerns? I know all this stuff is mechanically stressful which is why I bought this machine to upgrade instead of rolling my own joint with extruded aluminum. I think I don't have to worry about mechanical integrity, but again, I've never done this before. Thoughts? 

Will have all the faceplates and schemes up tomorrow, then I want to order this swivel head parts once I am sure that I can make this work.

UPDATE

I have switchkins working.  I have not yet tested CSS, but the axis/joint swap works with a couple of M-codes.

• Normal mode:
  • jogging/g-code/MDI axis "V" moves the parting slide (joint-3)
  • jogging/g-code/MDI axis "X" moves the real X-axis (joint-0)
• Switched mode
  • jogging/g-code/MDI axis "X" moves the parting slide
  • jogging axis V and joint-0 is disabled
  • Pre-switch V-axis G54 offsets are written to the virtual X
  • Appropriate max/min limits and accel/velocity are written to the virtual X
• Switched back to normal
  • All jogging/g-code/MDI work normally
  • X-axis position goes back to pre-switch position (G53 X0)
  • Same for V-axis

Remaining issues

• Axis GUI screen buttons can still jog joint-0/V-axis when in switched mode
  • I don't plan to use Axis once I'm done configuring & sorting out the lathe, but I don't know how to stop NML background messages from a GUI from moving the true X-axis.  Any ideas how to no-kidding stop an axis from being moved without disabling the drive? like DEACTIVATE_JOINT or something?
  • Bad Things will happen if the real X-axis moves when I've got the main and sub-spindles both clamped on a part.
• Jogging the slide while in switched mode results in half the motion I'd expect.
  • i.e. the DRO doesn't match the physical distance the slide moves.
  • This may be due to a scale component I've got in the X-axis jogging logic so I can jog in diameter mode.  Maybe I need to get rid of that and change the joint-0 scale.

Not posting config or other files until I've tested CSS and sort out the jog motion issue.

Big thanks to @Aciera for the help.

Any clues in syslog?

So in summary, this slave won't let you set SDO's again after they are set. Power cycling the slave resets all the SDO's to zero and allows linuxcnc to set them as per the ethercat xml file

Weird. I was right all along. !!!

After powering the IO board on and off, the SDO's are set to zero.
Restarting Linuxcnc again in this state linuxcnc opens without reporting any errors.
But if you close Linuxcnc and restart it, it reports errors on all of the SDO's.
I've never seen that before.
 

Thanks for the help. At least I can proceed to actually test on the spindle now!

I also set them in xml. But troubleshoot and experiment on the command line.

answer no they don't

I've always set the SDOs in the xml
So I had a play when I worked out I needed to use 0x3000 and despite all of linuxcnc's complaining, the entries were set correctly.
Do SDO's persist on power cycles?
 

Solved.

Short answer(s) for anybody in the future reading this:

1. No, do not need to change (INI_FILE_NAME)
2. Yes, yes, and I no longer care what "catch" does.
3. Yes.  You can just write each hal command line out in a readable form.
4. Yes, the way it's written permits changing "x y z" at the top and everything below gets sorted out.  Clever, but miserable for us Luddites to unravel.

Strange. If it's in the sdos listing I have always been able to read the value with
ethercat upload -p 0 0x3000 2
for example.

yeh, I tried 0x3000 and had no more luck (it is a hex value)

0x3000 perhaps? Try upload to read the register.

Apparently not. Looks like I have to lug a spindle into my office. Is the syntax right?

Does it work when you set the values with ethercat download/ethercat upload?

I'm trying to set the catio-a I/O module to talk to a VFD via Modbus but I am at a bit of a loss.
Excerpt from Ethercat sdos
I got this for the xml file but I get errors reported but eventually axis opens without any syntax issues with 
Failed to Execute SDO download size 1, byte0=0 error -5, abort code 06010000
subIdx 0 = read only
subIdx 1 is a PDO so no need to set in SDOs, PDO definition works
SubIdx 7 is a error count

If you have ideas, please have a go.

Would the VFD need to be connected via rs485? I have not done that yet.