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I am really glad, you most certainly deserved it.
Congratulations.

A real, metal medal on a ribbon even.

openuk.uk/honours/

 

Hey everyone, 

1.5 years ago i bought a CNC mill. It was a used portal cnc (barely used) with chineese base and german splindle, table, controller and linear rails upgrade by a manufacturer in Germany. It was based on CNC Graf and I always had issues with it. Either Fusion to cnc gcode was faulty, did not execute all commands etc. etc. etc. 
I grew and also wanted to build a large scale foam cutter for 1:1 RC plane replicas. So i said its the perfect time to retrofit the old cnc and to build the new 4 axis foam wire cutter and build it with linuxcnc and on the base of mesa7176EU. 
I bought all parts for the wire cutter and some upgrades for the existing cnc (touch probe, hand wheel, two tool measure sensors). 

This is the wire cutter design i made. 
https://imgur.com/a/XOdKh2n

I had so many issues even getting linuxcnc up and running for the mesa ...  Of course due to my limited experience with debian but also since there are so many unknowns on the mesa world as well.
I thought I will share my project (s) here and also post the wiring diagram and the configuration as i am continuing. 
Right now i finally got the motors spinning and hal machine enabled properly and am working on setting up the limit switches for the axis. 

The first questions that are right now open are in this direction. I will post later the configuration right now for the portal CNC. The wire-cutter is build in parrallel but priority has of course the retrofit of the portalCNC to get at least one thing back online. Wirecutter:

1. How do I configure multiple Y and Z axis in axis configuration for wire. I have two L legs basically so i need to control 4 Axis. In the linuxCNC setup i only saw the configuration for the XZY and XZYA. It should in the end basically have two heads .

Portal CNC

1. We have NPN NO sensors and are connecting them to a mesa board that has “sinking inputs”. I understand that a pull up resistor is required for it to work, but is it the “good way” or would it be better and safer to use a PNP NC Sensor.  Bear in mind that our sensor is a limit and homing switch for each axis. And if a pullup resistor is okay to go with, then will the difference between 2kOhm and 10kOhm  be important for accuracy ?
2. Stepper driver DM556 ENA+ and ENA - with mesa 7i76eu.
   The default for them is to be left not connected when using different controls(STEP+- and DIR+-), but are there any long term downsides to it? any way to use them for improving safety of cnc operation.
3.  If I understand correctly, reversing inputs/outputs in HAL makes changes operational only when the linux cnc terminal is operational and connected to the mesa board, in any other state the outputs will be “as they are” not “as set up” ? Or some of the configuration (In systems like(PC(Linuxcnc) - ethernet - mesa) is stored on mesa? If so, then what are the good practices about what should be done hardware wise and what can be safely done software side.

andypugh wrote:

So, are you saying that
"addf pwmgen.make-pulses base-thread"
Causes the PC to shut down and need a reset?

Is it possible that your base-thread period is shorter than the base-thread latency?

Yes, disabling that line makes everything work except for the PWM spindle.

Which parallel port breakout?

Can you post your hal/ini files?
 

To echo what rodw said:

Create a simple configuration with pncconf or MesaCT

Test this configuration by launching it from the command line

if there are issues you cannot resolve, post your error messages,  hal/ini files here

XY2-100 needs at minimum 3 differential outputs
(X data Y Data and clock) so you would likely need some
kind of daughter-card like a Mesa ENC422 that converts
single ended TTL level signals to differential signals.
in conjunction with the 7I97Ts parallel expansion port

(The converter is really just one chip (26LS31 equivalent on a small PCB)


 

Whats does the command:

ip a

report?

What happens if you:

ping 10.10.10.10

?

 

What was your user name here?
With the current one you have only this post.

Yes, the account is easy, but posts will take quite some time.

So, are you saying that
"addf pwmgen.make-pulses base-thread"
Causes the PC to shut down and need a reset?

Is it possible that your base-thread period is shorter than the base-thread latency?

I have a Chinese parallel port board and I can't get the Y1 axis to be a slave to the Y2 axis for portigo on a plasma CNC machine. I'll pay for the help.

Thanks for the link. I had already looked through the thread and stopped at mesa 7i96.

However, I didn't see anything about optical correction. Is it possible to calibrate the laser with LinuxCNC, or do you have to use the manufacturer's software? 

Hi.
After 2 years I went to my home made hobbystic cnc to realize a project.
When used last time, the machine worked perfectly.
But today, starting LinuxCNC, I got a message error then LinuxCNC quit.

Here you can find the message (only the Print File Information section):

Print file information:
RUN_IN_PLACE=no
LINUXCNC_DIR=
LINUXCNC_BIN_DIR=/usr/bin
LINUXCNC_TCL_DIR=/usr/lib/tcltk/linuxcnc
LINUXCNC_SCRIPT_DIR=
LINUXCNC_RTLIB_DIR=/usr/lib/linuxcnc/modules
LINUXCNC_CONFIG_DIR=
LINUXCNC_LANG_DIR=/usr/share/linuxcnc/tcl/msgs
INIVAR=inivar
HALCMD=halcmd
LINUXCNC_EMCSH=/usr/bin/wish8.6
LINUXCNC - 2.7.14
Machine configuration directory is '/home/joccnc/linuxcnc/configs/Prova01'
Machine configuration file is 'Prova01.ini'
INIFILE=/home/joccnc/linuxcnc/configs/Prova01/Prova01.ini
PARAMETER_FILE=linuxcnc.var
TASK=milltask
HALUI=halui
DISPLAY=axis
Starting LinuxCNC...
Starting LinuxCNC server program: linuxcncsvr
Loading Real Time OS, RTAPI, and HAL_LIB modules
Starting LinuxCNC IO program: io
Starting HAL User Interface program: halui
Found file(REL): ./Prova01.hal
hm2: loading Mesa HostMot2 driver version 0.15
hm2_eth: loading Mesa AnyIO HostMot2 ethernet driver version 0.2
hm2_eth: ERROR: 10.10.10.10: Could not retrieve mac address
Shutting down and cleaning up LinuxCNC...
Running HAL shutdown script
Killing task linuxcncsvr, PID=2058
hm2: unloading
Removing HAL_LIB, RTAPI, and Real Time OS modules
Removing NML shared memory segments


As I can see, the problem should be the Mesa board MAC address.
I didn't make any change (configuration, setup or else) last time I used the system (2 years ago), so I don't understand what happens.
Honestly, I made a first try with ChatGPT (I know, not the best idea but at the moment maybe.... - moreover it looks to me AS - Artificial Stupidity - more than AI - Intelligence....), but its suggestions were totally useless (some changes to ini and hal files), so I resumed my original files (attached).

Currently, LinuxCNC keep quitting; LinuxCNC correctly connects to the MESA Board.

My OS is LinuxCNC 2.7.14 + MESA 7i76e (Hybrid stepper drivers)

Can anyone help me to fix it?

Thanks

Andrea

These guys got it working with mesa and it seems  the pktuart so your 7i97 should do it..
forum.linuxcnc.org/27-driver-boards/3985...ot2-firmware?start=0