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We were at fabtech last week and were shocked at how affordable (in relation to 5 years ago) fiber lasers have gotten, especially the imported chinese ones. One thing that I noticed is that all of the decent chinese ones used Max Photonics laser head & source. We all know the imported chinese lasers can vary on quality, reliability, and parts/service.

So that led to the question: Why not buy an older name brand CO2 laser (mazak, amada, bystronic, etc...) and retrofit it with LinuxCNC, new servos & drives, and a Max Fiber laser source and head? A lot of places are practically giving away older CO2 lasers that work just fine, which would be a perfect starter. That way it is a better built machine with modern controls and laser, for most likely less money than a chinese import laser. 

Has anyone successfully done this yet? We did a Mazak VTC mill earlier this year and are absolutely thrilled with how it turned out running Probe Basic.

Hi guys,


I've been looking for decent servo drives for DC motors with a nominal current of 10A and a peak current of 20A for some time now.

A while ago, I also started using Beckhoff modules with Linuxcnc+Ethercat, which made me happy because it was relatively easy to get up and running.
I've been looking at the Beckhoff EL7342+ZB8610 package, which reaches 6.5A per channel, which is relatively good for small DC motors, although the price is steep.

I've used HDT LOVATO's Colibri series servo amplifiers in the past; they're relatively easy to use, offering differential analog and PWM/DIR control. What has caught my attention is that they have developed other quite versatile DX, TMC and NTT series of servo drives under various field buses CanOpen, ModBus, ****Ethercat**** etc, which can be configured to handle different types of brushless motors, permanent magnet DC motors, three-phase asynchronous motors etc, the type of feedback to use is also configurable: incremental encoder, absolute SSI, BISS, Endat2.2. Another thing I liked is that they have a software called Caliper that can be downloaded from the official HDT LOVATO website. It allows you to configure these drivers. The documentation is quite good. Although the documentation is available in several languages, there is some inconsistency on the website, and only the Italian manuals are correct.

After some waiting and many emails, I contacted HDT LOVATO and ordered the DGFox60EVO-10/20 driver. This can be controlled via analog control, pulse/dir, and ***Ethercat***. These drivers are developed in compliance with the CIA402 standard. So, I think I'll start reading a little about the PDO descriptions of these servo drivers to develop a driver that I can incorporate into Linuxcnc. It's always good to have your input, so good ideas are welcome.

The servodrive manuals and PDO descriptions can be downloaded from the HDT LOVATO website . You must create an account to download the documentation.

I'm looking forward to the servodrive's arrival. Greetings to everyone.

I'm probably missing the point, but how are the signals connecting to the internal Linuxcnc signals ?


Look this is an example of a MPG setup using the parallel port but it illustrates some basic routing of hal signals.

I performed a fresh installation of the entire system.
I updated everything.
configure the wired network connection to the motherboard and check with the PING command
using the wizard I created the configuration 7i76e (it did not allow me to configure TB4)

- Linux 6.1.0-39 rt
- Linuxcnc 2.9.5 
- New config Pncconfig wizard

 

mmh, i dont understand. how would you do this? I thought you had to do it through a subroutine or m code. 

Btw, this is how the m120 looks like.

This is not a LinuxCNC version issue.

This is a hal setup or hardware issue.

1. Do you have +10V on 7I76E SPINDLE+ relative to 7I76E SPINDLE- ?
2. Can you set the spindle speed to 1/2 way up and then run:

halcmd show all  > all.txt
 and post the all.txt file here

(you run halcmd from a terminal window when LinuxCNC is running)
 

Would something like this work? net pendant-encoder-a pendant.encoder-a [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.034.in
net pendant-encoder-b pendant.encoder-b [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.035.in
net pendant-encoder-btn pendant.encoder-btn [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.036.in
net pendant-jog-a pendant.jog-a [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.037.in
net pendant-jog-b pendant.jog-b [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.038.in
net pendant-jog-btn pendant.jog-btn [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.039.in
net pendant-momentary pendant.momentary-btn [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.040.in
net pendant-mode-sw pendant.mode-sw [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.041.in
net pendant-axis-x pendant.axis-x-sel [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.042.in
net pendant-axis-y pendant.axis-y-sel [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.043.in
net pendant-axis-z pendant.axis-z-sel [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.044.in
net pendant-z-y-sel pendant.z-y-sel [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.045.in
net pendant-dpad-up pendant.dpad-up [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.046.in
net pendant-dpad-down pendant.dpad-down [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.047.in
net pendant-dpad-left pendant.dpad-left [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.048.in
net pendant-dpad-right pendant.dpad-right [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.049.in
net pendant-coolant-hw pendant.coolant-hw [HMOT](CARD0).0.gpio.050.in
I know im missing something.

It won't have anything to with the Linuxcnc installation. If there was an issue, something missing, Linuxcnc would produce an error.
M
Maybe if you could take a picture of the power wiring to the board, that may show something. I've looked at things in the past for hours on end and missed a simple error.
I can understand how things can get very frustrating.
I take it you have measured the output voltage when not connected to the spindle input ?
The spindle does take a variable voltage and not a pwm signal, just asking as you were concerned about not being able to select pwm. Sorry for these simple questions, please dont take them as an insult .

I don't have an MPG. It's all done with switches. 1. empty 26. PE
2. empty 25. empty
3. momentary switch 24. empty
4. mode switch 23. empty
5. DT (encoder) 22. encoder power 5vdc
6. SW (encoder) 21. X,Y,Z; Z-Y: unused GND
7. CLK (encoder) 20. momentary GND
8. Z (X,Y,Z switch) 19. encoder GND
9. X (X,Y,Z switch) 18. D-pad GND
10. Y-Z switch 17. down
11. unused 16. up
12. empty 15. right
13. empty 14.left
Its all connected to a parallel port breakout board, connected to the P1 of the Mesa 7i96s. I don't NEED a python script. If i can handle the logic through hal, that would be the best way for me. I don't even need the logic. I just want to get them functioning and then i can add features later. I have a spindle encoder so i would need to load at least one more. The diagram doesn't reflect and additional encoder connected to 1,2,12. At the end of the day, Ai does complicate otherwise basic tasks. Thank you for the responses. If you need anymore information, just let me know.

Videos 7i76e spindle failure  
thankkkkkkkssssss !!!!!!
I have performed all the tests before starting the forum. It does not output 10 VCC, it does not regulate voltage, that's why I started the thread.
I am confused with this situation, the board was working perfectly on a lathe with version 2.7.15. Now I need to install it on another machine. I tried 2.8 - 2.9.4 - 2.9.5 the result is always the same, it does not regulate voltage. But there is something that is not connecting, linuxcnc shows good operation in Halshow, but it does not go out through the 7i76e.

I am going to reinstall linuxcnc from scratch again and see what happens.
thank you all for trying to help me!!! I'll post updates soon!!!
 

Some interesting suggestions on latency improvement here:
dantalion.nl/2024/09/29/linuxcnc-latency...arameter-tuning.html

But don't get too obsessed with it.
50k jitter is fine with a Mesa card. Though I would be a bit unhappy with 250k.
Try running the latency test without a base thread, you won't need one with a Mesa card.

The download links will all work if you take out the "s" in "https://..."
There is a problem with the wiki certificate. We keep trying to fix it, but without much luck.

When we had a similar problem with stringy chips, drilling holes with carbide drill with trough coolant in CrMo4, a modified G83 cycle solved that. Only retracting by 0.2mm after 2mm. Continue this 2.2mm / retract 0.2mm  steps until 
final depth, we made all the 120 holes without interruption and big loss of time. I think feed was about 0.12/rev

Can you describe what you want to happen? I have a feeling that the AI might be over-complicatiing things. But without knowing your requirements it is hard to tell.

Does the MPG connect to a Mesa counter, or only to GPIO?

Darium wrote:

Remapping is way way over my head and messing around with it can crash my machine
 

The simplest case of remapping is fairly straightforward. It starts off looking a lot like a subroutine in its own file (which is also a possibility) 

See section 2.6 here: linuxcnc.org/docs/stable/html/remap/rema...xample_remapped_code

Your ngc file would probably just contain the usual G83 but wrapped with a spindle reversal, and passing-through the XYZRQ etc parameters.