Conversion from Richauto A18 to Mesa 7i76e

At a glance, it looks pretty good but As Tommy said, I would do it one step at a time. When I built my machine with a 7i76e, I did something like:
1. Power to 7i76e and test
2. Add estop (you might need that)
3. Got steppers turning but not driving machine
4. Sorted out home and limit switches (the resistors for NPN sensors looks right)
5. Somewhere get the spindle working.

Back to the steppers, the Mesa stepgens have + and - connections for direction and pulse plus +5 and -5 volt power wires but it sounds like yours uses a common wire for one side of the pulse and direction (normally -). You might need to work out if they are active high or active low. I used active high .

Note the 7i76 prefers PNP prox sensors but I bought the wrong ones so the resistors will let you use them.

lets try it from the beginning.
unhook everything from the mesa board except 24v to power it.
does linux cnc recognize the board?(in terminal "mesaflash --device 7i76e --addr 10.10.10.10 --reahmid")
if it does make a basic configuration in pncconf.
also give us the model of the stepper driver or a manual so we can help you wire it up

I cannot establish an ethernet connection to the card. I still only have power and ethernet connected to it.
I have switched w2 and w3 jumper positions per the mesa manual corresponding to the 192 IP address, as well as the 10.10.... address listed referred to on the LinuxCNC Uspace site. Where they came up with the 10.10 address is still a mystery to me. I see nothing in the manual with that address and if the card is hard coded by way of jumpers for 192.168, etc I would think you should configure your NIC for the same network, changing only the last octet. I have tried it with both, and I can't ping the card with two different computers. I have tested the ethernet cable as well and it is fine. It is a standard straight-thru ethernet cable. Do I need a crossover cable?
This is pretty much the last straw with mesa. Their documentation sucks. If anyone has any ideas, I'll try one last time then I'm ripping it out and putting it up on ebay.

forum.linuxcnc.org/27-driver-boards/3559...ethernet-mesa-boards

i had the exact same issue as you. just follow what tommylight posted above it worked for me. i wasted 8 hours trying to figure it out on my own when the answer is a sticky post in this forum. and to make sure the card is recognized use "mesaflash --device 7i76e --addr 10.10.10.10 --readhmi" in terminal

mesaflash --device 7i76e --addr 10.10.10.10 --readhmid
There was a "d" missing at the end.
Thank you.

neowalla wrote: I can't re-photograph it as I have already unhooked the stock Richauto controller, so to show how it was terminated, I have to re-size the existing pictures I have.
It's not just the VFD. I just have zero confidence in this project and I'm afraid of destroying my machine. I've been in IT for 20 years, use Linux as my main O/S at home, and I have a background in electronics as well, but I do not know CNC electronics specifically and so the Mesa manual is like Greek to me. There are absolutely no videos on youtube (in English) on hooking one of these things up. I would love to find the textbook for "CNC machining 101" just so I can get a big picture understanding of what is going on in these things, but I haven't found any yet.
I'm trying to replace the Richauto A18 controller that came installed on my CNC just so I can have more granular control. Oh and being able to set feeds/speeds would be nice too. the Richauto completely ignores whatever I set in Vcarve. I know these Richauto controllers are out there. Laguna machines use them, as I'm sure a lot of other Chinese built machines do. I would have thought someone out there had been through this before, but maybe not.
At this point though I'm thinking about aborting this project, reinstalling the RA, and work instead on tweaking my post processor so it works correctly. Then finding (or writing) one that works in FreeCAD. The Richauto controller sucks, but at least it functions.

The standards for "being in IT" must be pretty damn low. I'm nothing much more than a hole digger, lifter of heavy things, ie; pretty much disposable human labour. I've had no trouble using the Mesa gear.
Wiring up your machine and getting it under control is a drop in the pond compared to thinking "Which order will I do the machining ?"
"How am I going to set up the job ?" "Do I need to make a custom fixture to make a custom fixture to hold the job I want to do ?" and finally "Where the hell is that widget that I just put down ?"

BeagleBrainz wrote: The standards for "being in IT" must be pretty damn low.

Was thinking the same thing.

neowalla wrote: This is pretty much the last straw with mesa. Their documentation sucks. If anyone has any ideas, I'll try one last time then I'm ripping it out and putting it up on ebay.

The problem might be that the Mesa documentation only documents the cards, which can be used in many different types of system of which LinuxCNC is only one.

So, in addition to the Mesa docs you also need to look at the LinuxCNC driver docs.
linuxcnc.org/docs/2.7/html/man/man9/hm2_eth.9.html
Now, I will admit that those, too, are rather terse and may not answer all your questions, but there is useful info there about how you need to configure the Linux PC in order to communicate with the Mesa card.