Coming from Mach3, QtDragon felt more natural.

After, if it is not working... I might have to try another one.

Have you set backlash in you ini file ?

Hello! We’re NidyCNC, and currently building PicoSwed, a compact Swiss-style CNC lathe with an epoxy-granite base maximum for damping and rigidity. We’d love your feedback before we lock key decisions. Early specs (in exploration) 

• ~700 mm Z travel, 25 mm bar capacity
• Up to 6,000 RPM servo spindle
• Options under study: live tooling, C-axis
• Likely control: LinuxCNC with a customized GUI

Why epoxy-granite?After ~2 years of research, we chose epoxy-granite to get low vibration + high rigidity in a compact, complex geometry—good for finish, tool life, and noise. What we’re asking from you If you have time, please take our 6–8 min survey. We’re especially looking for input on features, footprint/weight, power, and budget. Comments are just as helpful: rail layouts, guide-bushing choices, chip control, enclosure ideas. Survey:  docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfgZIjB.../viewform?usp=header  Transparency about Kickstarter & riskWe’re planning a Kickstarter in Q3 2026. Crowdfunding can be risky; to reduce risk we’re: 

• Manufacturing nearly all major parts in-house with our own equipment
• Using two vetted local suppliers only (ultra-precision spindle, large sheet-metal enclosure)
• Keeping the supplier list tight and local to control schedule and specs. The target for first beta/early units is Q2 2026. We’ll share build logs and test data before any crowdfunding starts.

What we’ll share back 

• Aggregated survey results + takeaways
• Early looks at test parts and FEA/measurement setups
• Beta details (opt-in)

 Notes: not a sales post; no preorders. If the project interests you can sign up for our waitlist :  www.waitlistr.com/lists/20470269/pico-swed-waitlist-nidycnc




 

With ethercat master installed it should be to just plug in the network cable, power on and the drive will show up in the "ethercat slaves" list, at least after "ethercat rescan".
If not, make sure the ethercat master is functioning "ethercat master -v" should show a lot of non-zero numbers.

Tune means to set the parameters in the servo drive so it follows the commanded position as closely as possible.
Usually involves PID parameters P, I and D in the drive, often some inertia setting.
I think there is a general guide in here to tune a servo. It is basically the same for all servos.
But your drive seems to have auto-tune. Check the manual and possibly download software.
And execute the auto-tune.
If your drive provides a following-error PDO use that to see how well it follows the commanded position.

The FERRORs are set as joint.?.f-error-lim from the ini file values outside of your hal file.
Set FERRORs to 1 inch and after you tuned the servos you can reduce them.

ddt takes the derivative of a pin value. ddt of the position feedback at constant velocity should be a constant value.
Very easy to spot if the feedback position isn't smooth. But you don't need to do that. Don't go there.

Summary: auto-tune.

 

Hi all is there a friendly soul out there, that have a parameter file ..? I can´t seem to get the RJ45 ports "online" like i have not made the right setup. i can connect to the drive via usb without any problems.

Best regards

Here is the full gcode. This runs fine in my simulator, and also ran fine in vs 2.8.

I see people use the word tune a lot, but I guess I don't exactly know what it means. Generally, I would think it just means working a certain value towards the best value. How would I tune the servo in this case? I know in the ClearPath Manual it says to auto-tune the servo using their software.

As for FERROR and MIN_FERROR, do those only apply when using PID calcs? Cause I think I have them set to 0 or maybe not included yet.

Lastly, what is ddt?

I might have to ship you a cake after all you've helped me with xD

Dear anyone but mostly Andy Pugh,

I would like to use your carousel component but for my life I cannot figure out how to.  I have seen a couple working examples that I have attempted to model mine after but nothing clicks.  I do realize that my machine is different and such, but I was hoping to catch onto a pattern. I will attach my files below, the meat of the carousel code is in custom.hal, the complete config is available on Github as well, ( github.com/RachelStarosta21/BostoMatic-w...oolChanger/tree/main ).  Any help or pointers would be amazing.  My config is currently modeled after this guy: www.forum.linuxcnc.org/38-general-linuxc...9-remap-m6-in-python and previously I was using Eric Salo's tutorial on youtube.

More information about my setup: The tool carousel motor is a servo motor that operates the angular axis of the carousel and spins. The encoder is a quadrature encoder with a scale of 8192(8192 total counts between each the index mark).  The machine itself is a bostomatic 312 from the 80s, the machine works.  We have previously actuated the tool carousel using a standard angular axis motor and encoder connections, but it seems silly to do work you already have. 

Constructive feedback only.
 

Maybe there is a guide, I don't remember it right away. I mean these are, shall we say, the common problems people encounter, nothing strange about it.
I'm patient so just keep asking.

When you get following errors in EtherCAT drives at high speed there are a couple of things.
1. Tune the servo. Settings in the servo drive.
2. If you still get following error, increase FERROR and MIN_FERROR

With EtherCAT it takes two servo cycles to receive the feedback value, so feedback position
is always two cycles behind. At 60 inch/min = 1inch/sec => 0.002 inch following error due to to turn-around time.
Position feedback isn't used for anything more than to warn when it becomes too large.
Tune the servo, that is the main thing.

Answering the second post here. With the minus sign in RefClockSyncCycles value the DC and the servo loop are synchronized.

forum.linuxcnc.org/ethercat/57349-import...ration-option#335710

I also might have stumbled upon a very similar, if not the exact same situation:
www.forum.linuxcnc.org/ethercat/56535-pi...ed-servo-in-csp-mode

'MANUAL_TOOL_CHANGE = True'  without remap M6, the toolchange popoup is working as expected. When m6 is remaped, the popup is not showing up, but the ui crashes:


  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/PyQt6/uic/ui_file.py", line 35, in __init__
    document = ElementTree.parse(ui_file)
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib/python3.11/xml/etree/ElementTree.py", line 1218, in parse
    tree.parse(source, parser)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.11/xml/etree/ElementTree.py", line 569, in parse
    source = open(source, "rb")
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


I think its a similar problem i described with touchoff, its looking for the tool_change.ui in my config folder
 

Is there a good .hal tutorial you could point me towards? I'm guessing many of my problems stem from my incompetence there.

I fixed pos-scale so that linuxcnc and the drive match, but the other issues still occur. Odd thing is that it still gives the joint 0 following error at ~60in/min, despite the drive actually moving faster. I suspect, then, that I could make the drive move twice as fast and the jog error would stay at the same logical velocity.

I had loaded the images, must have done it wrong...
 

Okay, with "remove any current tool length offset" you mean to remove the offset saved in the tool table? Shouldn't the tool probing overwrite this offset?