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Hi

I have a 7i76e that was given to me a longer time ago because it was faulty and I don't know what happened to it exactly. It's been sitting on the shelf ever since until I stumbled over it lately.

A visual inspection turned up nothing unusual, no holes in chips where magic smoke might have escaped. Upon applying power the field power led is lit as well as the pwr fail led. I checked and 3v3 is indeed shorted. In addition the ethernet controller chip gets hot, not smoking hot but definitely hotter than it should get.

Should I expect the ethernet chip to be the cause or is the cause rather somewhere else and it getting hot is just a symptom?

Kind regards
Martin

Ah... different GS2, this should be correct:

P00.20 = 2 Frequency command from analog input
P02.00 = 1 DI1 = RUN/STOP DI2 = FWD/REV

This doesn't work and I suspect that your Parameters may be incorrect.
Manual located here .
Thanks for your feedback though.

You need to set DI1 to RUN and DI2 to FWD/REV to work with the 7I76E
I think this is P3.01 = 1

Yes, correct.
DI1 = Digital Input 1 = FORWARD
DI2 = Digital Input 2 = REVERSE

That looks correct for SINK mode, assuming you can program
DI1 to be RUN/STOP,  DI2 to be FWD/REV and frequency
command from analog 0-10V input

I think this is P3.01 = 1 and P4.00 = 2

Can someone kindly verify these settings for my Durapulse GS21-23P0 please?
220V 2.2kw Spindle

 

 

Relevant manual pages attached.

Thanks in advance!

Thanks

4-axis mill
7i76e/7i73
Steppers on XYZ
Servo on harmonic A
VFD spindle w/1:1 timing belt drive - motor encoder goes to 7i76e
PDB
18-station carousel ATC, stepper driven w/5:1 planetary

 

I was board today so I looked at the Mesa site and gasped when I had seen the new 7i76eu. Is it true ? is the 7i76e universal coming soon?

>Thanks for your help to remind me the use of halshow/halmeter in checking. It reveals that the real problem is not the newly added hardware button but are the existing 7 hardware buttons. But, it is still strange that, those existing buttons could work properly before the newly one added.

>Those buttons are for toolchaning use. The circumstance is that, from halmeter shows, during normal non-operating state, out of the existing 7 buttons, 5 are found at false states while 2 are at true states (strangely also, why they are not shown at the same states as true ). However, these help me to find out that, there is my errors. A long time ago, i made physical change in circuitry of the button keys by going no longer pulling up or "called active low", however, i didn't do the change the setting of (net toolchange-x halui.mdi-command-0x <= hm2_7i76e.0.gpio.0xx.in_not)
to (...hm2_7i76e.0.gpio.0xx.in) 

>Furthermore, i found my toolchanging; o<change> program, has error too, one Oxxx number was used twice (in one more area)

>I haven't screen out(determine) which issue causes the problem mainly or more. And, after doing the corrections, the problem of "cycle start randomly" disappears and all goes well 

>Finally, another issue, as i have a diy wireless touch probe, i want to write a program to do the touch probe actions of: center, surface height and edge coordinates findings. For the program itself, i think i can handle, as i have done all of them in my old machine that running in Mach3. However, in LinuxCNC and Gmoccapy GUI, i don't know how to immplement in adding a new screen page and also adding some DROs and etc. Is it possible to do that?  

>Attached are a photo of the my machine that showing the layout of control panel and buttons, also, the o<change> program files, just for better understanding.

Mesa started making pci/pcie cards, then the made the 7i92 ethernet card which more or less was the same as their PCIe cards and needs daughter cards connected. Then they released the 7i76e  which was equivalent to a 7i92 + 7i76. If you needed to control 0-10v servos, you used a 7i77 with the 7i92.
Now with chip availability, they have moved on. The 7i96s is a great entry level card. It includes a spindle control and encoder. The earlier 7i96 was missing spindle control. It has fewer inputs and outputs than the old 7i76e but more than enough for a lathe. Its outputs are SSRs so in many cases it is not necessary to use external relays that you needed on earlier cards. It supports 1 daughter card and also the smart serial interface. You can't go wrong. There is no practical difference beween a PCIe card or ethernet.

4 - FPGA CARDS

PC CONNECTION
Mesa offers FPGA main cards with a variety of different PC connection types.  First decision is which connection method is used as this will depend on your computer hardware:

    • Ethernet
        ◦ Ethernet cable from the LCNC computer (PC or Raspberry Pi) to the Mesa FPGA card
        ◦ No additional hardware is required
        ◦ Network switches will interfere with the Mesa ethernet connection.  If the host computer only has one ethernet port, you must use a different port for internet connections (i.e. USB WiFi)
    • SPI
        ◦ Raspberry Pi plugs directly in to a Mesa motherboard via the Pi’s GPIO pins
            ▪ 7C80 & 7C81 cards
            ▪ NOTE - rpi 5 is not supported for direct plug-in (SPI) as of 2/2024
    • Plug-N-Go kits
        ◦ A Mesa card is plugged in to a PC’s internal PCI or PCIE slot, and a second card, external to the PC, is plugged in to the PCI card.
        ◦ The second card is connected to outside hardware (drives, IO components, etc.)

There are other host computer-to-Mesa connection methods available, but those are less frequently selected by novice LCNC users and will not be discussed in this guide.

ONBOARD IO
Some FPGA cards have onboard IO and/or drive outputs, and some don't.  As an example, compare a 7i76EU with a 7i92TH.  They are both FPGA main cards and both do approximately the same thing, but the 7i76EU has onboard IO connectors and the 7i92TH doesn’t

The onboard IO type is an ‘all-in-one’ arrangement with screw terminal connections for drives as well as analog & digital inputs and outputs.  This type also has one (or two) expansion connectors for use with daughter cards.

The other type of FPGA card has no onboard drive/IO screw terminal connections, but it does have connectors for use with daughter cards.  Examples of this type are the 7i80DB or 7i92TH.

Plug-N-Go kits are, essentially, a ‘no-onboard IO’ FPGA card coupled with an external drive and/or IO daughter card which has screw terminals.

As far as the novice LCNC user is concerned, there is no performance difference between an ‘all-in-one’ FPGA card and an equivalent no-IO FPGA card combined with suitable daughter card(s).

Which type of card to select is primarily dependent on which, if any, daughter cards are desired, as well as packaging/mounting restrictions.  A very large ‘all-in-one’ card, such as a 7i95T, may be harder to fit in a tight enclosure than a 7i92TH with remote-mounted daughter cards.

On the other hand, if you have the space an all-in-one FPGA card can be tidy as there are no inter-card cables or multiple mounts to deal with.

EXPANSION PORTS
FPGA cards can also be categorized by which expansion port type is used to connect daughter cards:

    • 'All-in-one' FPGA cards have one or two 26-pin expansion connectors.
    • No onboard IO FPGA cards may have
        ◦ Two (or more) 26-pin connectors, or
        ◦ Two (or more) DB25 connectors, or
        ◦ A combination of 26-pin and DB25, or
        ◦ Two (or more) 50-pin IDC connectors

The type of expansion port provided by an FPGA main card is very important to understand because while a DB25 daughter card can be adapted to a 26-pin FPGA port with a special cable, 50-pin daughter cards cannot be plugged in to DB25/26-pin connectors (and vice-versa).

Simplified, an FPGA’s expansion port(s) must be compatible with the daughter card(s) connection type.

 

Hi there,

So I've been going down quite a few rabbit holes the past few days as I'm going to make my own CNC plasma this spring.  I've gotten to the point where I think I know what I need to order - sort of.

I orginally wanted to do a Pi4, but have decided to do a standard computer setup and that will eliminate me having to make the kernel real-time on a desktop (as long as it's powerful enough, which I can get a pretty good one for $200 on Amazon).  

Now, from what I have figured out, with the 7i76e's being out of stock, it appears as though the replacement is the 7i96S (just with a few less outputs I believe).  

If I go with a non-HF plasma cutter that is THC capable such as this one , do I need to get the THCAD controller Mesa card as well?  If so, since this is a blow-back plasma cutter (non-touch) I'm assuming I need to get the THCAD2 not the THCAD-300?

Thank you for any help you can provide.  I'm going to do this in stages and would like to get the Mesa cards first so I can play around with them a bit before my next paycheque to get the cutter.

Hello.
I'm an absolute novice on the subject and I need help.
I installed Debian 12 from the website  kcjengr.github.io/probe_basic/quick_start.html
I followed all the instructions.
The installation was successful, and the Probe Basic simulation starts up.
I configured the machine in Pncconf in Axis version, and everything seems to be okay.
Then, step by step, I followed the conversion instructions mentioned above. It seems to me that I did it correctly, only changing in the ini file in the "TRAJ" section from 5 axes to 3 axes and from XYZAB to XYZ. Previously, I changed G20 to G21.
Unfortunately, the program does not start, and an error pops up.
I'll add that the card I'm using is the Mesa 7i76e.
I attach the report generated by Linuxcnc to the post.Perhaps someone will notice something?

Ok that didn't quite work. Turns out that when I was deactivating M7 (ie. M9) I was in juuuust the right spot for motor feedback to be in the right place.

I solved this the way Andy originally suggested; I have a three states:

1. Not homed where all works as normal
2. Homed and shoe active (feedback off and move shoe reverse of Z with offset)
3. Homed and shoe not active (feedback still off and move shoe to W0)