Open Source Controller with internal THC

Steve,

Related to your first post.
I called Hypertherm last week. They have no distribution to Australia. I have same problem in Servie with Thermal Dynamics.
So what i can do is order a hypertherm and send it to you with ups. That's the only way. I am oem hypertherm distributor.
We need to do some paper work for custom's, but that is quite easy. In this way you could set up a legal Hypertherm stock and selling point in Australia. I think I would prefer to do this relationship with Rod. He is i think the man to import this at stock at
his new wharehouse.
Also for Thermal Dynamic's Autocut 200 and Ultracut 100 - 200 HD we could do this. It would be a good idea i think to start with.
Don't forget. If you do nothing you will get nowhere.

Where would be a good starting point for me to learn to create my own user interface that uses linuxcnc in the background.

If you want to do that. You must have high level skill's. Look at TTY, that is i think used for embedded linuxcnc in the background.
One guy so far i know has done this. He has privat github repro's. He is also a very good c programmer. He know's how to write some code from scratch.

Better is to go with the mainstream flow at this moment.
Only reverse feed has to be merged at this moment. It was reverted the next day.
I think the german have to check some code and must check the program for working correctly very, very good...
My own repro is online for this student to check his code, after he has merged reverse adaptive feed from Rob Ellenberg, i get it offline because i am working on other thing's that are important at this moment.

Basically what I want to acheive is what CandCNC have done and have a program similar to CommandCNC but has internal THC and has the ability to communicate with servo drives via ethercat or any modern field bus.

I am set on ethercat as my open source robot controllers use ethercat to control the multiple axis's in real time.And ethercat is the fastest field bus currently available.

I was speaking to a guy from Hypertherm about their controllers and he was telling me that they use ethercat for there new machines and it is necessary to use for there newer technologies such as true hole.

Do you think it would be possible to implement a open source version of Hypertherms true hole technology with linuxcnc?

Also with Linuxcnc do you think it would be possible to use Hypertherms range of high definition plasmas?

There is no technical reason that a LinuxCNC based hole technology similar to the HT True Hole can't be done. Do you know enough about the plasma cutting process to write a specification? There may be legal issues about how you implement it based on HT's rather extensive patent portfolio. Certainly the name is trademarked and can't be used without permission.

LinuxCNC doesn't care what it is controlling, if you can get the interface specifications then a driver can be written for it. The only problem is that HT may consider the machine interface of their HD plasma power supplies proprietary and make you enter into an NDA to get the information that may prevent you from distributing any source code you develop.

There are several rather extensive threads here about using Ethercat interfaced drives, so yes it can be done. Others are actively working on this for plasma machines by the content of posts in other threads. I think there may be some restrictions about distributing modified driver code but some of that is covered in the treads.

I have already hacked CommandCNC ( it is just a Gscreen configuration no black magic!) to use an internal THC. I don't use CommandCNC because I don't like how somethings where done and find it doesn't work well with my process flow.

John

Managed to find the communication protocol specifications for the Hypertherm XPR machines written in October 2018 and had a bit of a read. These machines have both Ethercat and 115200 baud RS422 interfaces and either can be used to read or set various registers in the device. Each register corresponds with a given setting. RS422 is available on the Mesa smart serial interface UART with the correct firmware.

The XPR cutting system is set up as an EtherCAT® slave device. It is configured to use the CanOpen Over EtherCAT (COE) protocol.
**The XPR cutting system is configured for 1 millisecond cyclic data.

There are status bits for ArcOK, Ohmic sensing etc and the torch voltage is presented to the bus every 2 ms.

I think you'd have to build a CAN open module for the ethercat transport layer as the current opensource ethercat modules seem only to talk to ethercat drives (SOE protocol). I don't think this would be too difficult.

thefabricator03 wrote: I am set on ethercat as my open source robot controllers use ethercat to control the multiple axis's in real time.And ethercat is the fastest field bus currently available.

What open source system are you using to control your robots?

I have Four robots currently, all of them are made by Yakawa motoman,

two use the propietry controls until it fails then I will retrofit them.

The other two are much older and I have been playing around with two controllers,

The first controller is made by Daincube,
www.daincube.com/robot-motion-controller/

Its not exactly open source but it can be configured for any robot configuration.

The second controller I am playing with is made by Mint Robots,
mintrobot.co.kr/mep-pi/

I have not done much with this unit as I am have many projects going on as well as running a busy workshop.

My goal is to come up with a industrial solution that is cheap, I want to build robots that are affordable for small and medium sized workshops,

My robots each when new retailed for $60,000.

Also everything about them is expensive, spare parts, I can even add Modbus communication to my two newest ones as it is not supported,
A ethernet IP card is $3500, Its one hell of a racket.

When I first brough them I needed to use them on a track so I needed to add a external axis, Yaskwawa told me they dont make the additional axis cards anymore so I would need to find a second hand one, This is for a 10 year old robot. Second hand one was $11,000 and I needed two.