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Thanks, this is delightfully simple. I need to think about overflow of the count variable though. Need to look up numbers first.

Every motor that is controlled by a Variable frequency drive...... Changes speed by frequency not voltage.... Hence the name!

It's not pwm like you see in small DC motors, universal motors, AC router speed controllers, etc

The drive coverts ac from the wall, into DC, then back into AC at a varying frequency to control the motor speed. Trying to keep voltage at name plate specs.

It makes sense that at ~half the voltage you have ~half the torque

Fix that quickly or you will fry that spindle.


Second thing to watch out for is endmill size. Too big and it won't have the torque to spin it even if it has power on tap (try loosening a rusty bolt with a stubby wrench... Same problem). Drop down an endmill size or two. I'd try in the 3-6mm range (1/8 to 1/4 in) for a spindle like that.

Idea was inspired by this one. 

Using the PIO state-machines of the RPi Pico, quad-decode/counting of multiple encoders is a piece of cake.
I have created a distributed motion-controller using this device. Limited to 128 axes but that can be increased if need be 
However, I'm a closed-loop servo kinda guy. Can't understand why anyone would be using steppers for machining, etc.

Craig

Glad you found it!

Another tip, always use a thread locker on CNC machines, the extra hour and 5 bucks spent putting it together with that locker saves days of trouble shooting hard to find issues like this.

If nothing else (or the machine was assembled without thread locker) paint a line from the side of every bolt and about a half inch on the machine so you can identify bolts which loosened much easier.

Hello rodw,
the document
docs.google.com/document/d/1jeV_4VKzVmOI...m1x7oiw8VcLFdiY/edit
is really great and would have helped me a lot as a beginner.
In your document there is a section "QtPyVCP, Probe Basic and EtherCAT" in which you recommend QtDragon. Do you know whether a version for lathes is also being planned?
I would like to familiarise myself with a GUI in the near future. I don't find Axis and Gmoccapy particularly appealing. My choice would now be Probe Basic Lathe, unless there is a QtDragon Lathe version.
Greetings from Marburg

HI
This worked with another device, I don't know if it can help you.
Maybe the idx needs to be fixed



HI

UPDATE: Yesterday I checked every screw except for the one on the servo coupler connecting it to the ballscrew, as for checking it I needed to tear down the Y axis, so today I did exactly that, and guess what, IT WAS LOOSE. Tightening it resolved the issue entirely.

On the X axis though, the problem came out only after squaring the XY gantry, so it's probably not due to the non-squareness of the system. It could be that the side plates are not exactly flat and are forcing a bit of twist in the gantry.

In the future I'll keep an eye on motor current, to see if I need to lower accelerations etc, thanks jimmyrig.

I'll keep investigating, but for what regards this thread, I consider it closed

I am also facing the same issue. It seems to me that the duplication of entries in .pref file is happening after the completion of a job, and shutting down the software/ system. It is also very random. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.
I clearly remember that this error started occurring only after I changed the theme in the settings tab.

In your ethercat_conf.xml check that vid and pid are correct - maybe remove the leading zeros. Just an idea, though. Had similar behavior when I mistyped the pid for a servo drive.

Putting the correct motor voltage in will probs allow it to do an auto-tune without failure too. Use all the data from the nameplate on the motor

The only time I have had to stray from nameplate ratings was when I had to up the current 0.5A over the nameplate rating a couple of times to get through some spindle run-in before putting it back to the correct value.

Are you sure you're supposed to be reducing the motor voltage?

I don't think you need to drop the voltage due to your VFD not having the frequency to match the MAX frequency of the spindle.

Pretty sure if it's a 220V motor on the nameplate then that's what it should be set to in the VFD. The vfd will be making a bunch of calculations based on that value and so it should be the true value. It just will top out at 600Hz.

Hi There,

I have been trying to setup a "CAT-IO" ethercat IO board, it's not unlike the DIEWU DIO board RodW made a config for.
Using the rpi-4-debian-bookworm-6.1.54-rt15-arm64-ext4-2023-11-17-1731 image, worked well.
Ethercat is up and running, ethecat-conf.xml seems to be accepted, I have only set up the outputs so far as I'm trying to do it piecemeal to reduce complexity.

Issue is, while I can see the pins in halshow, and I can set them - the outputs don't actually turn on at the IO device.

dmesg shows:
[18011.371947] EtherCAT: Requesting master 0...
[18011.371968] EtherCAT: Successfully requested master 0.
[18011.372513] EtherCAT 0: Domain0: Logical address 0x00000000, 42 byte, expected working counter 1.
[18011.372518] EtherCAT 0:   Datagram domain0-0-main: Logical offset 0x00000000, 42 byte, type LWR.
[18011.372664] EtherCAT 0: Master thread exited.
[18011.372673] EtherCAT 0: Starting EtherCAT-OP thread.

I also don't see it going OP in $ethercat slaves, is it supposed to show OP here after linuxcnc is started and dmseg shows 'Starting EtherCAT-OP thread' as above?

cnc@CNC:~$ ethercat slaves 
0  0:0  PREOP  +  IMC IO MODEL with EtherCAT

Here is The ethercat-conf.xml  - sadly I cannot find anywhere any documentation on the spec for this document, so some is a guess, parts I'm unsure about are in bold.

<!-- 
 Slave0 EtherCat IO Card "CAT-IO"
 www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805154534518....pt=glo2usa4itemAdapt
-->
<masters>
  <master idx="0" appTimePeriod="1000000" refClockSyncCycles="1">
    <slave idx="0" type="generic" vid="0x00090588" pid="0x00109252" configPdos="true">
    <dcConf assignActivate="300" sync0Cycle="*1" sync0Shift="0"/>    
     <syncManager idx="3" dir="out">
        <pdo idx="1600">            
            <!-- Digtial Outputs -->
          <pdoEntry idx="2300" subIdx="01" bitLen="16" halType="complex">
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-01" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-02" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-03" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-04" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-05" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-06" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-07" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-08" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-09" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-10" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-11" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-12" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-13" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-14" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-15" halType="bit"/>
            <complexEntry bitLen="1" halPin="out-16" halType="bit"/>
          </pdoEntry>  
        </pdo>
     </syncManager>  
    </slave>    
  </master>
</masters>  

Im just testing it in a simple my-mill sim setup, that I have added the lcec lines to:
Top of my-mill.hal file:
# If you make changes to this file, they will be
# overwritten when you run stepconf again
loadrt [KINS]KINEMATICS
loadrt [EMCMOT]EMCMOT base_period_nsec=[EMCMOT]BASE_PERIOD servo_period_nsec=[EMCMOT]SERVO_PERIOD num_joints=[KINS]JOINTS
loadusr -W lcec_conf ethercat-conf.xml
loadrt lcec
loadrt sim_parport names=parport.0
setp parport.0.reset-time 5000
loadrt stepgen step_type=0,0,0
loadrt pwmgen output_type=1


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Pardon if this is the wrong area for this post but some recent testing on mesaflash led me to discover that EPP mode is broke on versions 3.4.3 and forward. Would / could someone verify my findings and even better, come up with a fix. A programmer i am not.
github.com/LinuxCNC/mesaflash/issues/79
thanks

I see no output that is indicative of a parallel port issue - but lspci -v shows both ports are disabled

No output - but lspci -v shows both ports are disabled. I have made a few attempts to enable them, not working yet