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1

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mesa FPGA cards

« on: March 13, 2020, 05:15:01 PM »

I had forgotten that Mach does not have the same internal configuration ability within its hal layer that Linuxcnc does. Since Mach configuration is done with check boxes the features that I'm used to using and depend on would not be available.

I agree that the closed loop part should be within the FPGA programining and that is way outside of my knowledge base to accomplish. My gantry milling machine does not use closed loop functions so I will concentrate on converting it from Mach3 to Mach4 instead of proceeding on the knee mill.

Just out of curiosity would the use of windows embedded instead of the regular windows versions offer a performance increase or is it just a stripped down version that is still not real time capable.

I will also do more research on available motion controllers with closed loop abilities.

2

Mach4 General Discussion / Mesa FPGA cards

« on: March 13, 2020, 12:34:08 AM »

I have searched the forum to see if anyone had developed a partial or fully working plugin for any of the Mesa FPGA boards but most post on this subject seem to end a long time ago.  I had started on a plugin project for Mach4 a number of years back but had to drop off completing it due to other obligations.

To get started on this I have updated the SDK I have to version 4430 and will be setting it up on one of my Win7 development computers in the next few days to refresh my self.

One of my milling machines is using a pre-programmed network connected Mesa 7I80 FPGA board and almost all of its 72 available pins are in use. The milling machine runs fine using Linuxcnc but I would like to have the option of being able Mach4 on this machine as well. Another of my machines uses Mach3 and would benefit from a upgrade to a Mach4 and Mesa configuration as well.

Referring to the short description below, do you think that Mach4 can be set up to handle those same functions?

The knee mill I plan to use for testing if all works out has 5 motor drivers for DC motors using step and direction with each also having rotary decoder inputs. 4 motors are in use with rotary encoders  mounted on the back. There are also linear encoders on the machines knee, X, Y and Z axis that provide a,b and index pulses to provide closed loop feedback for position control on X,Y and Z.  So I hope that Mach4 is able to handle the closed loop signals from the linear encoders.

The spindle has gear tooth encoder along with index detection to control spindle speed which also provides a,b and index pulses. Spindle speed being controlled by Mesa PWM converted to 0-10 Vdc externally.

There are positive and negative limit switches on the Knee, X, Y, Z. and home switches are on X,Y and Z. Two probe inputs are used, one for spindle use and one for the table.  Additional IO  pins are used to switch the machine from CNC to Manual use and to provide a interface to the manual control box for power on, move out of limits, estop and other functions related to CNC or Manual mode switching.