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I've been looking into RIO for couple of days, reading forums and one question i can't find the answer for, may be it is obvious for all but me, what is the data protocol used in RIO over the spi? is it the same as Mesa LBP16 commands requiring hostmot2 or something else?

I'm sorry.
It seems it was my misunderstanding.

I've had a problem for a few runs where my X axis has been stalling while traveling to the right, and today it completely stopped working entirely. I've traced the problem all the way back to the mesa board.

By plugging in the X axis control lines in Y or Z's control ports on the board, it functions as expected. That means its not the wiring, the drivers, not the stepper itself, but something on the Mesa itself.

I've not changed anything in the INI besides some homing offsets for quite some time and it functioned perfectly for a around 6 months prior. There has been some temperature increases, but the mesa is in cased with 2 120mm fans facing it.

Has anyone seen or had this problem before? Is there a solution you can suggest?

You would probable need a daughtercard because
the XY100 interface needs 4 differential outputs and
1 differential input (that is you could not directly connect
to P1). Something like a 7I78 could do.

Without buying anything, you could test the galvanometer
with a 7I95T config that steals 2 step/dir channels to get the
XY100's 4 differential outputs and use a sserial input for the
differential input.
 

Hello! New to LinuxCNC and Mesa and trying to set up a 6-axis (+2 galvo axes) laser system. All 6 of the step/dir and encoder pins of the 7i95T are anticipated to be used, and trying to figure out how other pins can be repurposed.

Is there a firmware version for the 7i95T with xy2-100 support (xy2mod)? The unit currently has the default 7i95t_d.bin firmware loaded.

Which pins on the 7i95T could be used for controlling a 2-axis galvanometer? Would the Serial 0 and Serial 1 pins be suitable?

The manual mentions that the P1 expansion port can be used to expand I/O including for more step/direction channels. Can these pins be redefined for such purposes directly or is an expansion card / daughterboard needed?

Can (which?) pins on the 7i95T be used to control an IPG laser (please see attached image of pinouts from laser specifications) or is another card needed? 

hello gentelmen,

I did some stuff... if you are familiar with TC3 and you have working configuration.. You cas use the consoleTool which translate complete .xml configuration from Beckhoff ethercat master to lcnc ethercat master by drag and drop your right working config .xml + initCmds should be imported too

regards

Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
...
But first you have to stop thinking DMG or Dosan have good controllers, most industrial controllers suck badly for some work while being very good for some other work.
Point being, C1, C2, C3 are very wrong names for rotary joints/axis, LinuxCNC use A, B, C and they are tied physically to X, Y, Z, in that order so very easy to remember and use.
As for the rest, the above Yes's are for everything else you asked, LinuxCNC can do 5 Axis (can do 9 axis XYZABCUVW and each of those can have more than one joint/motor/drive controlled separately), yes you can use a parallel port or two or three if you need more inputs/outputs, parallel ports can be set to IN/OUT/X mode, etc etc etc .... the list is very, very long.
And most importantly, YES, start building the machine, no matter what i or others say, just build it!

Edit:
Just read it again, C are spindles in axis mode so forget the part of me complaining about it.

No, homing to index is common and fully supported.

I'm just saying that the actual index hal pin is not useful
for homing. The index-enable pin is what's used to communicate
index information from the hardware/driver to LinuxCNC

That is, this hal statement:

net phaseZ [HMOT](CARD0).encoder.00.input-index

Doesn't do anything useful.

But this hal statement:

net b-index-enable joint.3.index-enable <=> [HMOT](CARD0).encoder.00.index-enable

Allows LinuxCNC to enable index detection AND allows the driver to inform LinuxCNC
when the index has been detected.

To test whether the index hardware is working (assuming you can move the axis past
an index mark), you would:

With LinuxCNC running,  use halshow to watch the signal b-index-enable
and then with either halshow or halcmd, set b-index-enable true"

halcmd sets b-index-enable true

halshow should now show b-index-enable true

now, if you move the axis past an index mark, b-index-enable should go false.

This is how you test for correct index operation.