Well I thought I'd post a progress update. Last Friday I received the Scorpion differential output board, after talking it over with the manufacturer I decided it should get a hillbilly reconfiguration to better match the rest of the system the hillbilly put together.
When I got it the input was by ribbon cable which was a little short for how I plan to use it , plus all those wires "stuck" together and the same color wasn't very easy on the old half blind man.
Scorpion as received ;
Scorpion after hillbilly rework ;
I didn't have the connectors for the outputs so I removed the headers and soldered my output wires directly to the board, manufacturer said that was OK.
I'm currently attempting to construct a 3 axis machine but am already dreaming of a rotary 4th axis so I took care of in/out for A axis as well.
I double continuity checked everything over and it checks like I intended it to, now time will tell if my intentions were correct.
I think I'm ready to begin a temp installation to see if it works. At this time I only have one of the drives inputs jumpered properly to get it to run motor self tuning routine so I'm going to see if the Scorpion gets the motor jogging cw & ccw as it should, I was getting cw in both jog directions as it is now. If this part works out I will be looking into a proper rewire of all 3 drive input cables.
As part of the input rework I want to use the alarm out from drives to operate a relay with contacts in the Mach E-stop circuit so a servo alarm will trigger an E-stop in Mach & stop all motion. It was suggested by Hood to also have the relay cut drives directly just in case Mach drops the ball or doesn't catch it quick enough. I think that is a great idea as I'm a belt & suspenders kinda guy for safety. But I do have a question, I have a drive input for "servo on" and also a input for "inhibit", Any thoughts or suggestions as to which one of these inputs would be best to have the alarm relay cut (servo on) or activate (inhibit)?
Waiting for your much appreciated input, Rick