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There is no existing VFD. The spindle motor is a large, old 3-phase induction motor, and it’s currently started using a classic star/delta starter.

The actual spindle speed is controlled by changing gears in the mechanical gearbox. There’s no electronic control involved right now.

I plan to keep the gearbox, but replace the starter with a modern VFD. That way, I can at least get rough electronic speed control, without trying to replace the entire spindle drive system on such an old machine.

I tried setting up extra joints but am struggling to run them in gcode with custom M codes. Does anyone know the best way to do this? Just need to home and move into position.

I wanted to add that my machine also has a parallel port available, if that would help

Hi Everyone, 

I am new here and new to CNC, Linux and Mesa boards, so pls excuse the novice questions.

This is my setup
I have a 5-axis milling machine, which uses 2 stepper motors for the z axis, so in total there are 6 stepper motors. I have also bought a servo motor ECMA-C21020RS from Delta to power my spindle. I have a Mesa 7i96s card

Now for my question
Have I bought the wrong Mesa card for my requirement? From my understanding, the 7i96s can only control 5 motors so my 6 steppers and servo exceed the capacity. If so, what would be the best solution? To buy another card and scrap the 7i96 or is there an option to buy an add-on card to work with the 7i96s?

Thank you in advance for your help

Hi Everyone,

First of all, thank you in advance for your help. I should mention I am new to Linux, new to CNC, and new to Mesa cards. I have been following the tutorial for getting started with the Mesa 7i96s by talla83 en, but I have been stuck for the last couple of days trying to get the Mesa card found using the Mesaflash command but it always says No 7i96s found. I have tried following tutorials for changing the local IP address, thinking there is a conflict as well as changing the jumper on the card to change the IP address but neither have worked. I wanted to put up my settings here hoping one of you will notice a glaring mistake I have made and could point it out. Thanks once again
https://ibb.co/BH9BbB5R

I've been playing with the WLED plugin, got a string of 5 led's working for various things, that is really cool.

I thought I'd try add a blink function to one of them. I see that only the WLED_Expansion allows me to assign an LED from another plugin, but when I try I get the compile error

Procedural assignment to a non register "LED_BLUE" is not permitted.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong

giaviv wrote:

pulse width was already 100,000 ns so that wasn’t the issue.

Was that "base-period" ?
Pulse width is 5000 by default, base period is 100000 by default, if not set otherwise, but base period is only present when you select using a parallel port, and this might have been the issue with stepgen numbering etc...

I would use pncconf  (the new one in the link) or MesaCT
and avoid AI as it's really just a time sink here.

I have never seen a missing module in 2.9.4

( There is no motion.so in LinuxCNC so don't take bad advice from AI )
 

The only option would be to buy a cnc lathe, which is not a budget option.

Every other option is going to require you to do some wiring.

Even something such as this,  github.com/clough42/electronic-leadscrew , will require you to do some wiring. And this is only a solution to screw cutting and doesn't have any cnc capabilities, tho it doesn't connect to a computer.

Once a again another Electronic Lead Screw,  www.rocketronics.de/en/els/ geometry dash lite  no connection to a PC,no cnc capabilities but does other some extra features. Is still a user install, so there is wiring involved, but no connection to a PC. not really a budget solution.

First mistake was using a buck conveter, 2nd I would seem to be not checking the operation of the buck converter prior to connecting everything up. 3rd mistake would have been to triple checking everything.Simple solution would have been to power the breakout board from a known and working 5v supply or whatever voltage the BoB required.

 Thank you very much for your help.

There is no specific driver for the 7I95T, its supported by LinuxCNCs hm2_eth driver.

Normally you don't need to do anything with the on card firmware unless you have some
specific different I/O requirements. ( Like you want one step/dir output to be PWM/DIR or
you have parallel daughtercard  )

Not sure what explains the initial lack of functioning, possible an issue with the 7I76
config file conversion.

OK there's only one yellow LED on in the center of the board.
so that means analog power issues.

Most likely problems are:

U33 (74ACT04) bad ( can be damaged by a 5V surge to 6.5 or 7V )

Q3,Q4 (FDN337,NTR2101) bad ( can be damaged if U33 fails )

A bad OP-AMP = U3,U8,U14,U20,U28,U35 (MC33179) for channels 5,4,3,2,1,0
Note that if an OP-AMP failed, it's most likely the ones you had
connected.

I would try replacing U33 first and then rechecking.

 

 

I see. This happened after we tried to cut with max 105amp current on the plasma to be able to cut 20mm.
I can replace any parts if you give me the part numbers. This is the second 7i77 !! It took more than 2 months I think to get this one.
And I will need any useful guidance you can think of to avoid this kind of issues in the future, please.
The mesa 5v is now supplied by an external power supply. It was provided by the pc psu up till this issue occured.
So to sum up the current situation:
When i click machine enable linuxcnc detects voltage on aout0 and aout1 and activates the soft estop. This explains why even when I disconnect the analog outputs the machine does not jolt but linuxcnc still thinks the machine is running away. Am I getting it right?
and here is a picture of the mesa leds. One red led on the bottom right side and the others are yellow. 

pulse width was already 100,000 ns so that wasn’t the issue.

i downloaded mesact, chose 7i95t and when i switched to the firmware tab got a message that no firmware was found, prompting me to download it which i did.

then built the config, and it worked perfectly right off the bat so firstly thanks so much for the help here!

i’m curious what this missing firmware was - since no flashing happened im to understand this isn’t the board’s firmware, so i’m assuming then its firmware on my desktop for communication with the 7i95t?

before, i was using hm2_7i95 which was available to the HAL (not 7i95t which the HAL complained about being missing once I ran LinuxCNC with it initially). so this is just hm2 “driver” firmware for 7i95t which was missing on my debian?

No i am not streaming, but i did try screen recording and OBS was mad at me for using such a big screen so it recorded just 1/4 of it!
I do not think it is worth streaming as:
1. i am old so reflexes are not what they were 30 years ago
2. i play using a Logitech MX3 Master wireless mouse, any gamer would cringe at this as it is big and heavy and slow (but i do have big hands so it fits nicely)
3. i have 43 hours of play time in over 4 years
4. takes more than once to finish some levels on Nightmare difficulty
5. helps a lot with sweating !
-
I might do a shop tour video soon, just need to kick myself in the behind and do it.
P.S.
Just in case you missed the PC build topic, i got those 96GB of DDR5 5200 RAM for 146 Euro, where the normal price is above 400 Euro, new with warranty. Probably a typo instead of 416, but i ain't complaining!

I decided to go with Scylla From BTT since I have good support and documentation from grblHAL but I didn't buy anything yet because I still haven't finished mechanical part of my printNC project yet. So let me know of you have good news Because I really want to go with Linux CNC