Category: Driver Boards
I’m trying to test run my new Mesa 7i95t. I am completely new to LinuxCNC but have lots of CNC (and programming/linux experience FWIW). Before I start touching anything in my DIY machine (currently running on FluidNC) I just want to get a single stepper driver to run a single stepper motor so that I can complete the flow end to end. As a sanity check I’ve hooked up a DM556 stepper driver to the card’s stepgen 03 connector (tried both a differential connection and also just connecting PUL- and DIR- on the driver to stepgen’s ground). The stepper driver is powered by a 24v PSU and works perfectly if I just connect its PUL to a pulse generator. The ENA is left unconnected, enabling the driver. I’ve setup the Mesa config with pncconf using 7i76 as the card and then later switched to hm2_7i95.0 in the INI as per the instructions. Assigned stepgen 03 to the X axis. LinuxCNC starts fine, I can unlock the machine and jog, and see the DRO changes values - but the stepper doesn’t move. Looking into the generated HAL file, I see control type set to 1 (velocity and not position? does this make sense for a stepper driver like this)? Also, I see a bunch of pid initialization, and again it’s confusing to me why PID is needed for an open loop stepper driver that provides no encoder feedback to LinuxCNC. What am I missing here? Is there a sample HAL file that works with the 7i95t and a simple open loop stepper driver that I can test? Thanks!
