Probe Basic and Carousel ATC with Geneva and Stepper

yeah that delay is a bugger.. the drive should be enable constantly and just be looking for a direction voltage and step pulse stream. i would have the drive enabled anytime the the machine is on and not estopped. and have it sitting idle waiting for pulse command.

That's how it works for the MESA, but the MKS OSC stepgen board works a bit differently.

I think it's continuously sending pulses and just switches the drive by the enabled signal.

 


If I remove the EN wire, it just starts running.
Maybe disconnect the EN wire and just toggle the CLK wire with the on/off relay? (that's the pulse signal)

i think because the carousel comp stepgen output setup is a bit more daunting. at least i haven't found a bunch of folks using it. i think spumco is the only person i know running it

Probe basic was prepared to control a dumb motor FWD and REV just by two outputs.
I didn't know so I bought a stepper motor with gearbox and driver because at first I wasn't considering the geneva wheel.

Started out with the MESA stepgen but later on I thought might as well keep that for a future rotary axis, as the small PCB is 10 bucks + 2x a relay, so thats why I set it up like this.

For now I'll just accept the situation and carry on with the small delay, until I got the whole toolchange process sorted.

Im at the point now where the carousel extends, gets detected, spindle moves to clearance height, spindle unclamps the tool etc..
All 5 sensors are working, Carousel Home, Carousel Index, Carousel IN position, Carousel OUT position and the Spindle Tool Clamped and Tool Released sensors.

Now its time to program the final movements, placing and removing a tool from a pocket.
Will be a little different probably compared to other carousel toolchangers where the carousel moving in and out takes the tool from the spindle.

When no tool is loaded it has to move down, clamp the tool, moving to the right to take a tool from the pocket, carousel retract, spindle up again and resume.
Or with a loaded tool it has to move in front of the carousel, moving to the left into the pocket, unclamp, up, rotate to new tool, down again etc.

Should be fun, hopefully it won't get fooked. :-D

Made the first toolchanges today!
Altough, taking a tool from the ATC is not yet working optimally.

I was customizing the M21 and M22 subroutines to get it working, but in the end found ''toolchange.ngc' which is also playing a part.
I probably need to add some movements specific to my atc to toolchange.ngc instead of to the M22 subroutine.





Other than that pretty happy it's doing its job!
 

Today I rewired the carousel stepper driver to the MESA hardware stepgen nr4, which was a 5min job.
Consecutively, I spent 4 hours trying to get it running again.

The stepgen in velocity mode is controlled mainly by "velocity-cmd" which takes a float value.
Positive for CW and negative for CCW.
Main problem was setting the float value with the two digital outputs ( motion.digital-out-03 & motion.digital-out-04) that are triggered for CW and CCW carousel rotation. 

But in the end I solved it using MUX4: linuxcnc.org/docs/2.4/html/man/man9/mux4.9.html

# --- (Carousel CCW / REV) 
net ATC_Motor_CCW mux4.0.sel0 <= motion.digital-out-03
net ATC_Motor_CW mux4.0.sel1 <= motion.digital-out-04 

net ATC_Motor_DIR_VEL hm2_7i96s.0.stepgen.04.velocity-cmd mux4.0.out 

net ATC_Motor_CCW_SPD mux4.0.in1
sets ATC_Motor_CCW_SPD 5000

net ATC_Motor_CW_SPD mux4.0.in2
sets ATC_Motor_CW_SPD -5000 

net ATC_Motor_OFF_SPD mux4.0.in0
sets ATC_Motor_OFF_SPD 0 

net ATC_Motor_OFF2_SPD mux4.0.in3
sets ATC_Motor_OFF2_SPD 0  


#*******************# ATC Stepgen#******************* 

# Step Gen signals/setup
setp hm2_7i96s.0.stepgen.04.steplen 20000       # Step length (nanoseconds) 20 usec
setp hm2_7i96s.0.stepgen.04.stepspace 20000  # Step space (nanoseconds) 20 usec
setp hm2_7i96s.0.stepgen.04.maxaccel 50000    # Maximum acceleration (steps/second^2) so 1/10 second to full speed
setp hm2_7i96s.0.stepgen.04.maxvel 5000         # Maximum velocity (steps/second)
setp hm2_7i96s.0.stepgen.04.step_type 0           # Regular step type
setp hm2_7i96s.0.stepgen.04.dirsetup 50000      # Direction setup time (nanoseconds) 50 usec
setp hm2_7i96s.0.stepgen.04.dirhold 50000        # Direction hold time (nanoseconds) 00 usec
setp hm2_7i96s.0.stepgen.04.control-type 1        # Control type (1 for velocity control)
setp hm2_7i96s.0.stepgen.04.enable True            # Enable the step generator initially 


No more delayed response!!!
 

Updated vid



I was also planning to mount the toolsetter on the ATC, so it becomes available when the carousel is out of the way.
But I'm a little worried it will trigger due to the movement of the cylinder, as the end cushioning is not that good, need to solve that first.