Welcome to the dspMC/IP board

[ART]

Hi everyone:

  This board is for information fo the VitalSystems dspMC/IP motion controller. Its the place you can contact the designers and discuss any questions or issues
with this hardware.

Art

[small_rcer]

Good day:

When using the dspMC/IP board do you have a separate network card dedicated to the Vital System interface?

I am concerned with an ethernet connected controller, either the dspMC/IP or the Galil or the Dynomotion brand, that network traffic would possibly slow down the network at a critical time when  cutting something.  Having one NIC going to the company network and one dedicated with a x-over cable to the dspMC/Ip would possibly help this.  However 2 NICs in a PC might affect the availability of Interrupts for Mach's use.

Do you have encoders on the leadscrews or ballscrews?  On the servo motors?

Which encoder do you use for position information, the motor or the ballscrew encoder?

Are you using it with a lathe or a mill?

I see a big price range between the dspMC/IP, the Dynomotion and the Galil cards.  The choice probably boils down to who has written and documented the best software to make them work with Mach.  With that said, what have people found with the software and the documentation?  Which has the best docs?  The best software?

Thanks for your interest.

Jim H

[vitalsystem]

hello Jim,

separate network card is not required.  if you will be accessing internet or other lan computers quite often, then it will be more reliable to have a dedicated ethernet connection. 

currently, one encoder is used per axis. should be mounted where the actual motion is being measured for feedback.

mill software is almost complete.  lathe needs some addition in mach so it can support threading and tapping via plugin.  working with Art and Brian on this issue.

we have the best price I beleive.  features are added and documentation is also being updated as we get feedback from our customers.

regards,
Anton B.
Vital Systems

[usfwalden]

I'm interested in this control.  I'll actually pick up the phone tomorrow.  I noticed the encoder inputs have a+- b+- z+-  is the z+- for index?  I very definitely want to home to an index.

I was just installing a galil control, a used dmc-2160 with a new amp-19540 on my ex-cell-o spindle wizard and the the control is reporting as a dmc-2120 instead of a dmc-2160 despite reporting the correct serial number for the dmc-2160.  Even though I purchased a new amplifier, cables and the shebang to go with the used control and would have been happy to send the control in for repair if it needed it Galil told me that they would not support 2nd hand units and tech support would not take my calls.  The manager of the tech department actually skoffed at me and told me if I bought a new dmc-2260 he'd shower me with support.  Needless to say I'm not interested in doing business with them anymore.

Does probing work with this control?

[vitalsystem]

Z+/Z- is the differential index signals.  we are currently working on threading and rigid tapping.  probing will be next in the queue of features to add. 

PID tuning turns out to be not too difficult.  start from low values of kp, kd and ki, and gradually increase untill you see little oscillations.  put a limit on the max integral error to remove oscillation.   you want high Kp, but not too high that oscillations get out of control (following error trip will disarm the axis if that happens).


Anton B.
VSI

[Tomas]

What do you enter for scale? and where do you get this value?

tomas

[vitalsystem]

index pulse will be soon added for homing. right now it only looks at the home sensor.  the hardware support is there, need to add the logic in the code.

pid scale:
in the servo loop, pid calculation result is first divided by the scale before applying to the DACs.  lets take an example.  assuming you want Kp 100, Kd .01, and Ki .05.  multiply all by 100, which will make Kd = 10000, Kd  = 1, and Ki = 5, and therfore scale will be 100.  hope this helps.

best regards,

Anton B.
www.vitalsystem.com

[Tomas]

Thanks,

  What about input gain?  Are there any docs on this stuff?

Tomas

[usfwalden]

Anton, great,  do we have a guestimate on when homing to the index pulse and probing will be functional?

[usfwalden]

My 2 cents on the documentation:  I found the existing documentation clear, well organized, and very user friendly.  In comparison to the Galil documentation I have been dealing with of late it is 1000x better.  I think the questions being asked are because some of the parameters for motion control setup were just mentioned and not explained in the "testing installation" section, pages 18-22.  As that information is filled out a bit more I would suggest keeping it in the straight forward simple walk through style of the rest of the user manual.  If you were sit down and set up a control and go through a routine like set the scale, set p to some guestimate, set d to 1/4 of p, set I to 0, test and keep moving p and d up until you get oscillations, move p and d down a guestimate amount, set I up some amount, and I'm not saying that's the actual routine but whatever routine you would use...just give us the walk through nice and short and clean like the rest of the document.  If the same person who wrote the current user manual did that I think you'd have a 40 page user manual that blows away anything else out there.

Thanks,

 What about input gain? Are there any docs on this stuff?

Tomas