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Re: Stepper controllers
"Ian W. Wright" <[email protected]
Thanks very much Paul, this is helpful. I did try using opto isolators
on one of my early experimental circuits but they just seemed to gum things up, however, I think now that the problem might have been a current limitation on the parallel port - I hadn't thought of that. I have been surprised that I can't drive the steppers reliably with the 486 computer and that stepster and MaxNC both seem to need a pentium as I too can remember 8080s doing the job admirably in industrial environments. In fac, only last year I was playing with a giant Asquith miller (12ft x 8ft bed!) at a military aircraft factory which still uses an early computer fed by 8" floppy disks. Ian paul@... wrote: In the home shop environment, this is not quite so critical, but to beBest wishes Ian -- Ian W. Wright LBHI Sheffield Branch Chairman of the British Horological Institute. Bandmaster and Euphonium player of the Hathersage Brass Band. UK. See our homepage at:- or or 'Music is the filling of regular time intervals with harmonious oscillations.' |
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Re: Stepper controllers
"Ian W. Wright" <[email protected]
Thanks very much Paul, this is helpful. I did try using opto isolators
on one of my early experimental circuits but they just seemed to gum things up, however, I think now that the problem might have been a current limitation on the parallel port - I hadn't thought of that. I have been surprised that I can't drive the steppers reliably with the 486 computer and that stepster and MaxNC both seem to need a pentium as I too can remember 8080s doing the job admirably in industrial environments. In fac, only last year I was playing with a giant Asquith miller (12ft x 8ft bed!) at a military aircraft factory which still uses an early computer fed by 8" floppy disks. Ian paul@... wrote: In the home shop environment, this is not quite so critical, but to beBest wishes Ian -- Ian W. Wright LBHI Sheffield Branch Chairman of the British Horological Institute. Bandmaster and Euphonium player of the Hathersage Brass Band. UK. See our homepage at:- or or 'Music is the filling of regular time intervals with harmonious oscillations.' |
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Re: cases.
Mo
It seems that cases are a common issue. Usually the amount you think is
reasonable to pay for what is basically some folded sheet doesn't buy what you need. Here in the U.K things are usually costlier than the U.S. I needed to get a case that was 15x10x7 and I phoned around to get prices for custom made from local sheet metal companies most wanted about 50 which is about $75 for a basic box in mild steel without any welds and simply bent and folded with a lid. Whilst speaking to a friend he mentioned that companies that specialise in air-con ducting use very elaborate corner bend-tuck presses and use good galvanised steel and knock out the box sections in record time using guys that were paid very low rates per piece. I found a local company in the Yellow Pages and went in person as phone quotes mean talking to some salesman. When I got to the yard, I went up to the one of the guys making the units and got a quote of 10 and ready in 30 minutes for that he also made up the linternal baffles I was needed to mount the fan and cooling air without getting any dust into the electronics - it was a work of art ! He has offered to make as many more as I need at very low cost. I am sure if you tried this route you may get a good result too. I will put up pictures of my box and internals on my web site soon. Mo |
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Re: TCL/TK GUI
David L Anderson
Fred et al
I have a simple TCL/TK CNC control panel GUI that I was playing with for my own use. I sent it out serveral months ago to Fred Proctor and some others on the rt-linux NG. It is just a simple hack that at this point has no interface to EMC. IF I could get some assistance in the details of the EMC interface, I could try to get it to function. I am currently trying to get EMC running after abandoning my own attemps to write stepper motor control code (I learned a lot, Fred must work hard to get this stuff going!!!) I'll dig up the TCL/TK code and place it on my web page this weekend. P.S how about a set of wish items for a "user configureable" interface dave Kutztown,PA Metal working CNC Mill |
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stepper conversion
Hello
I am new to the list and the internet,I converted a far eastern mill to stepper control about two years ago, which has run successfully since, I purchased the interface and program from R Bartlett Coventry England for 130.00 it is required to add resistors to the interface dependant on the size of stepper desired. It runs on 10v 9amps for each motor with 10TPI leadscrews, this gives a pull on the beds of 130 LB, which is adequate for my needs but I have run it at 12v for an hour or so with 155 LB pull. Anyone requiring details of the conversion please get in touch Peter Smith peter@... |
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Re: Installing Linux?
Jon Elson
"Buchanan, James (Jim)" wrote:
From: "Buchanan, James (Jim)" <jambuch@...>First, you need to make a boot floppy, if you don't have the CDROM. With a CDROM (if your CD drive is IDE, and your motherboard will boot from CD) you can boot directly from it. But, if you downloaded Linux, then you need to make a boot floppy. There is a DOS program on a directory on the CDROM that will make a boot floppy. But, I don't know if that is hidden somewhere in the big download file or not. Maybe you could find the boot floppy program on the web site. Anyway, you insert the boot floppy (or CD) and boot from it. A primitive Linux kernel comes up, and allows you to configure and install Linux from there. It builds partitions on your disk, installs the boot loader program, and a bunch of other stuff (drivers, networking, development software, X windows, etc.) as you desire. Without the book that comes in the Red Hat boxed set, it would be REAL hard to do this right. Even a Unix guru would have trouble without the book. CanYes, absolutely. Linux can read and write DOS floppies and DOS disk partitions. LILO can boot whatever image you want, DOS, Windows, or Linux. You can run a DOS emulation window IN Linux, and supposedly, the Windows in a Linux window program is now available. Jon |
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For Michael Tilse
Jon Elson
For Michael Tilse, who seems to have changed his ISP or net address:
Michael Tilse wrote: Jon,could get some $ for it. I think San Diego Motion had it underpriced. Imight put it on ebay.interested in your servo boards?you thought it would work great for your lathe.Hi, I just discovered this message in a pile of old messages that snowed me under about the time our latest baby was being born. I don't think I got around to replying to you. I guess that I could trade you 3 sets of the servo amp 'mini' parts kit. That includes a circuit board, 2 fuse clips, 17 surface mount capacitors, a pair of pot core halves, a bobbin and some wire for the pot core transformer. Of course, you'd get all the documentation, etc. What do you think of that offer? Jon |
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Re: Installing Linux?
Fred Proctor
James et al,
If you're planning on running the EMC on Linux, note that we haven't ported to Red Hat 6.0 yet. We're still on 5.2, which has Linux kernel 2.0.36. Red Hat 6.0 packages the 2.2.something kernel, which is a major change. The Real-time Linux people have a patch for the newer kernel, but we haven't tried it here. Unless you want to feel the pain, I recommended getting 5.2. There are plenty of mirror sites that have this distribution. Try www.sunsite.edu. --Fred |
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Re: Commercial software
Fred Proctor
About EMC, writing PLC programs for things like tool changers, and
custom GUIs, Jon Pritchard wrote: 1. Can a machine control "soft" PLC be incorporated with EMC to run other machine control such as auto toolchangers etc? Or does EMC have this built in? Matt Shaver gave a good synopsis of this. The current EMC has a PLC-like controller, generically called "emcio" in the documentation, with executables "shvio", "mmio", and others. These are Linux processes (don't run real-time), cycling at a configurable rate that can run at about 20 milliseconds per cycle at their fastest without resorting to CPU soaking or hacking the Linux kernel (both which I've done). The difference between shvio ("Shaver IO") and mmio ("Minimill IO") is that shvio talks to the parallel port for digital control of spindle on/off, speed increase/decrease, and direction, and for coolant, lube, and estop handling; while mmio doesn't have any coolant or lube and uses an analog control of the spindle. These are coded in C++, using some templates that we at NIST use on many of our projects. These templates follow our Real-time Control Systems (RCS) methodology, with which us NIST people are familiar. Writing a new PLC-like controller from scratch this way is a pain in the neck for most people. Any programming language can be used to build a PLC that works with EMC, with the following constraints: 1. It has to run with Linux. Linux supports most languages, e.g., C, C++, Perl, Tcl/Tk, Java, Python, FORTRAN, etc. but these are not PLC languages. Does anyone know of a ladder logic programming environment that runs in Linux? University code? Alternatively if a ladder or IEC-1131 programming environment can generate C code as an output, this could be copied to a Linux box, edited where necessary, compiled, and run. Something like Wizdom's Paradym-31 could work like this. 2. It has to include some way to read commands and write status, using any of the Unix interprocess communication methods, or sockets, or something like that. If it's C/C++/Tcl/Tk/Java/Python code then no problem. If it's a standalone PLC then it must have some way to send it commands. If it uses a serial port then that would work also. Ideally there would be a Linux version of a PLC programming environment with a software interface for commands and status. Ideally also means free, like some university project. Also, question 2: 2. Is it possible to put together some of the pretty screens for talking to EMC sort of like one sees on commercial CNC? Whats the programming language that would typically be used to do this? < The EMC has an X Windows GUI with menus, buttons, etc. I wrote this in C using the X Toolkit library. I modify this all the time but it's not drag-and-drop GUI building, to say the least. We also have a Jave GUI, and Matt Shaver has done some Java work too. This is a better way to go than the X Toolkit. We had some problems with Java 1.1.X earlier, but Java 1.2 is out and the problems seem to be solved. One alternative that some have mentioned is Tcl/Tk, the scripting language for building GUIs. Any Tcl/Tk programmers out there? There's also the QT library from Troll Tech that can be used to build GUIs that can be ported between Unix and Windows machines. The KDE desktop environment that runs on Linux uses this. --Fred |
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Re: camtronics driver
Tim Goldstein
Hey Dan,
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Thanks for pointing out this source. I did find that they have a web site for us impatient types and you can download a copy of their catalog from it and have instant gratification ( ). I just printed the catalog out and they sure do have a pretty slick product at a reasonable price. I think I will put a link to this company on my web site. Tim [Denver, CO] ----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Mauch <dmauch@...> To: <CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@...> Sent: Friday, June 11, 1999 7:27 AM Subject: Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] camtronics driver From: "Dan Mauch" <dmauch@...>hunted wasall over and the only enclosure I could find that was at least that big wasdesigned to mount in a 19" rack unit and cost around $120. I ended upmakingmy own case out of masonite with a particle board base. stepperinsidemounted on the outside of the case and the transformers are locatedarethe case. The transformers are on one side of the case and the driverson the other. No problems with noise. supplydrivers and was wondering if it's ok to put the transformer/power wascomponents in the same enclosure. I'm new to all of this stuff and lotwondering if the AC current in the enclosure would end up creating a discussion of shop built systems in the above catagories.------------------------------------------------------------------------of noise that would affect the stepper driver operation. To Unsubscribe: |
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Re: Installing Linux?
Tim Goldstein
WARNING WARNING Imminent doom is approaching!!
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You are going to need the older version ( RedHat 5.2 ). RedHat 6.0 uses an new kernel that does not yet have a stable real time patch and EMC requires this. The distribution of EMC is currently set up specifically for RedHat 5.2 Tim [Denver, CO] ----- Original Message -----
From: Buchanan, James (Jim) <jambuch@...> To: <CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@...> Sent: Thursday, June 10, 1999 4:36 PM Subject: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Installing Linux? From: "Buchanan, James (Jim)" <jambuch@...>discussion of shop built systems in the above catagories. To Unsubscribe: |
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Re: Installing Linux?
You can set up a dual boot system, although it's more complicated than setting up a dedicated system. You will need a Linux boot disk. These can be made on a PC though. You will need to set up a linux partition on your drive. This can be tricky without destroying what's already on there. There are a couple of programs floating around, some free, that will do that relatively safely. Fips is one that comes to mind. You will need access to the linux files needed to build the system. So, you'll need a CD on your system. There are other ways to do this, but that's the easiest. Rather than repeat everything, take a look at This is a reasonbly good intro to setting everything up. I have a dual boot setup on my laptop. Rather than using lilo, I always boot Win95 and then have a menu come up which can run loadlin with the kernel I want to use. Loadlin is a linux loader than runs from the DOS prompt, which is sometimes useful. -- Paul Amaranth | Rochester MI, USA Aurora Group, Inc. | Software Development paul@... | Unix / C / Tcl-Tk |
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Re: Stepper controllers
In the FWIW department, more years ago than I care to remember, I worked for a company that was building computer controlled machine tools using the (then) revolutionary 8080. Some of the stuff was pretty neat - they had a gear cutter that was set up through the console. After the setup, just toss a blank in and cut. Anyway, their equipment was not, shall we say, extremely robust and we were always getting stuff back for rework. I do recall that all of the control lines from the processor used opto isoloators and they still managed to fry the motherboards. In the home shop environment, this is not quite so critical, but to be safe, I'd use them. Motherboards are pretty cheap these days, but it's still a headache to swap them out. For a TTL output, or anything capable of sinking the optoisolator drive current, you can use something like this for a signal line: +----\ | Sig in | )----|<------\/\/\/\-- + +----/ | \_ ------ / \ \/ \-------+--\/\/\-- + | | Gnd +--- Sig out 300 - 500 ohm resistors would work for a 5V supply. You can use a non inverting gate as a driver or just use the signal line if there's nothing else attached (and it can sink 10 ma). Or you can use an inverting gate (7404) and put one on each side to buffer the isolator and increase fanout. I suppose if you're really picky, you'd put a schmidt trigger buffer on the output. And you really want separate power supplies (otherwise, what's the point? you'd just couple the noise, spikes, etc through a couple of resistors) -- Paul Amaranth | Rochester MI, USA Aurora Group, Inc. | Software Development paul@... | Unix / C / Tcl-Tk |
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Re: camtronics driver
Dan Mauch
When I first started selling complete controllers with case fans and power
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supplies installed, I found that the case was the show stoppper. Like you said most of them were in the $120 range and using a PC case did not lend themselves for a nice looking product. Then I found Sescom. You can get a catalog from them by calling 800-634-3457 I use their MC series cabinets. What is really nice about them is that it is all flat panels that can be easily machined and then you assemble it with extruded rails to lock it together. Then I decided to have the back panels silk screened for the connectors. Last, I do all the machining of the cases. The price for the bare case is ~$44. Dan -----Original Message-----
From: Tim Goldstein <timg@...> To: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@... <CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@...> Date: Thursday, June 10, 1999 9:41 PM Subject: Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] camtronics driver From: "Tim Goldstein" <timg@...>making my own case out of masonite with a particle board base.inside arethe case. The transformers are on one side of the case and the drivers discussion of shop built systems in the above catagories.on the other. No problems with noise. To Unsubscribe: |
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Re: Commercial software
Matt Shaver
From: "Jon Pritchard" <jpritchard@...>First, let me apologize for the flip attitude I took with you in responding to your initial post. Its just that we've been having a pretty long discussion here regarding various control programs and the EMC software sometimes to the tune of 10+ posts/day and your question seemed hilarious to me at 1am when I read it. I'm really not like that at all ... 1. Can a machine control "soft" PLC be incorporated with EMC to runOne of the first EMC installations was on a K&T mill that had a tool changer and a multispeed gearbox. See far a picture of this. This project was a few years ago before the software was ported to Linux. The PLC portion of the EMC code has the facilities to do this type of control, but there isn't an easy to use "ladder logic" type programming front end that can be used to set it up. The short answer to your question is that the capability is built in, but some custom programming will be required to implement a solution specific to your machine. There is another fellow in Kentucky who has a similar project in mind. I'd like to see more details of how the electrical/mechanical interface works on your machine to determine the number of I/o points needed, whether the tool changer's operation requires tight tolerances in the timing of its operation, etc. This is really a question for Fred Proctor at NIST and I'll ask him about this next time I talk to him, probably today. 2. Is it possible to put together some of the pretty screens forPretty screens we've got! See Jon Elson's EMC page for a nice screenshot of the XEMC user interface. This program runs (as you might guess) under X Windows which comes with Linux. There is also a Java based interface to the EMC. It caused a lot of problems in the beginning, but is now said to be fixed. I haven't tried to use the official version since then, but I did write a prototype Java user interface that you can see at: There's no documentation, but go there with either Netscape or IE with Java enabled. After it comes up press the Power button, then the Reset button. After that, highlight the four axis position display blocks, one at a time, on the left hand side of the screen and press the Home button near the top right for each one to home each axis. After that you can change the jog increment from High to any of the incremental values in the drop down menu and use the + and - keys on either side of the home button to jog the highlighted axis. Play around with the rest of it and tell me what you think (especially note the background color change when you press Run and Pause). This is only a "dummy" program for simulation, and hasn't been integrated into the EMC, although there is an existing class that would allow it to be. I did this a while back before there was an X interface as a way to show people what I thought a cnc user interface should look like. It's also my very first (and perhaps at this point, my last) Java program! Some links for you to check out: Root through these and get back to us with your comments and questions! Thanks, Matt Shaver mshaver@... (410) 521-3715 |
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Re: Commercial software
Jon Elson
Jon Pritchard wrote:
Guess its time to start learning Linux and EMC...Yes, I'm very sure it could be integrated at several different levels of complexity. You could just program it in C, and add it as another task. or, you could write a simple language to handle the functions you need. This is apparently in the works, but not front burner. 2. Is it possible to put together some of the pretty screens forI'm not sure what you are asking for, here. Do you mean 'graphical programming', where it draws the part as you specify the moves, bolt circles, etc.? Jon |
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Re: Camtronics, opto isolators
Roger Brower
Electronics Now magazine has plans for an optical isolator circuit for parallel port interfacing. They have it built into an older
mechanical A/B switch, but I'm sure it could go into a mini-tower case between my Camtronics driver and the port connector. If we all show enough interest, maybe we could get Dan to make us boards for this too? Thanks for your postings- Linux is over my head, but I'm anxious to hear your guidelines for motor lead diode sizing... and placement! My name is Roger Brower- My interest is CNC routers for woodworking, I have little electronic or machining experience as yet. Can anyone offer opinions or experience with the Gantry Router plan set from Data-Cut? See Can anyone out there machine the 15 critical parts for me? or supply parts? Thanks, RAB rbrower@... |
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Re: camtronics driver
Al Schoepp
For the box for the unit I'm building I talked to an electrician friend
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of mine. He was able to round up a junction box for me, it is 12x12x6, and is a very solidly constructed. Al Tim Goldstein wrote:
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