Messages

61

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: April 10, 2013, 06:37:41 AM »

Thanks for the link Hood.
    I'm currently just hand drawing and making notes on notebook paper, you've seem them before. Probally tough for someome else to follow but I think at least good enough I can go back, look at my scratchin' and figure out what I did. Would be nice to have some "pro" looking schematics, might lessen the hillbilly factor a tad.

                                         Rick

62

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: April 10, 2013, 03:58:48 AM »

Update so ya know I'm still kickin'.
    My finger is still about double size, when I went to work Monday the powers that be said gotta have it looked at. So they get me an appointment with company work comp doctor at 2:00 pm. Doc checks it out, tells me I did good by putting a splint on it Saturday, agrees it's more than likely broke, need X-ray to confirm, sends me to hospital for pic. They take X-ray late Monday afternoon, nobody in our little one horse town/hospital to read it so it gets sent 150 miles away to be looked at by someone who is supposed to know what they are looking at. All day Tuesday goes by, still no word. Oh well, even doc said "yes,probally broke,need X-ray to confirm then you can come back so I can take your splint off and replace it with mine".
     Tough to get much done with a bum hand but I am working on a proper installation of the Scorpion driver board and Monday morning I placed the order for parts to build the servo alarm safety relay board. Also been putting some time into making some decent/better electrical diagrams of the build so hopefully troubleshooting problems will be easier down the road after I've forgotten how I put all this stuff together.
    Hoping to have some progress to show soon, still plugging away slowly one handed.     Rick

63

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: April 07, 2013, 10:58:23 AM »

Well guys,
    With my finger banged up I spent my time yesterday reading & figuring on how I should do the "safety circuit" so drive alarms bring everything to a stop. You know, the system I hope is never needed or used but when it is I'll be glad I took the time to do it. I was thinking about using an ice cube relay because I already had 1 on hand & I'm cheap. But coil draw was close to drive spec of 50Ma max and don't want to risk doing damage to servo drives. So I thought maybe a transistor taking signal from alarm output and transistor switching coil in ice cube relay, again cause I'm cheap & I have several transistors on hand I could choose from. WELL NOW, I read a bunch about transistors yesterday, learned a lot I didn't know & decided I wasn't going to learn enough fast enough to put a circuit together that  I'd have confidence in using just because I'm cheap & wanted to use what I already have.
    So, I have been looking at "perf board" & "vero board" you guys showed me & I think I'll try making a board using some proper pcb relays. I'm not ready to learn the etching process yet just for a board or 2 and as Brett suggested If I ever get to the point of having a diy cnc of my own I could mill a board and skip the learning & chemicals altogether. I gained some confidence at possibly using some type of prototype board after the rework of the Scorpion differential output board which seems to have turned out well.
    So this morning I was going back through this thread to take a look at the pcb relays Hood had suggested and said he used before in a safety circuit like I want in my machine. Now I must say I'm embarrassed to discover that Russ had told me to check cw/ccw parameter in post #93 and in #97 Hood had confirmed & agreed that my problem of only getting motor rotation one way was probally related to cw/ccw parameter as well. I guess my only excuse is that I thought I had always heard that Mach3 output step & direction commands so when I looked at parameter #29 and saw I had it set for cw/ccw in my pea brain cw/ccw are "directions" so I just flew right by thinking that was correct even though you guys told me that could be the problem. Thankfully Russ looked at the manual himself and asked "hey dummy do you have #29 set at 3 like we told you". Of course he didn't say it like that cause you guys are to nice for that but you had to be thinking it!
    Sorry I was too dense to get that on my own and Thanks again for sticking with me long enough to get that problem fixed, I sure appreciate it!

                          Rick

P.S. Finger is only double size today and at least I have enough grip strength in my hand to button my pants without too much pain! That's an improvement over yesterday.

64

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: April 05, 2013, 09:08:38 PM »

Thanks for the good wishes guys.
He made a mistake,  I paid, stuff happens, wasn't on purpose.
Come to think of it, I made a mistake myself once.

  Rick

65

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: April 05, 2013, 07:20:44 PM »

    Well i sure am glad I got the post from Russ early this morning. I changed the parameter before I went to work, saw the motor jog properly at last and left for work feeling great. Then today at work got involved in an accident caused by a                          co-worker and smashed my middle finger on left hand. Swelled to about 3 times normal size now, throbbing like a toothache, black, blue, purple, bloddy etc. At least I left work with a finger in perfect condition for telling him he was # 1.
    May be broke, filed accident report and decided to let it ride a day or 2 and see if it gets better or worse. Finger messed up bad enough to pretty much make whole hand unuseable and can't get much done with only 1 good paw.
    Really glad to see it work right this morning because now I can't do much on the project for a while, (day or 2 at least). Even hunt & peck typing tough with 1 hand.

            Rick

66

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: April 05, 2013, 06:31:30 AM »

THANK YOU RUSS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    I can't believe my luck at finding such a GREAT bunch of people on this forum. I've just added another to my list of hero's and people I owe. I'm VERY thankful that you would take the time to look through the manual and spot possible parameters that could cause the results I was getting. I did have #28 at 0 but I had #29 set at 1, changed it to 3 as you suggested and It works correctly at last. YIPPIE!!
    Not only have I been helped so much here, but another thing that gets me is that this is a MACH support forum and to the best of my knowledge I haven't had a Mach problem yet.
    All my problems have been because I bought the drives and motors from ebay seller FA Parts, they came with what was supposed to be a block wiring diagram and configuration to make them work with Mach 3. Well the instructions were/are CRAP, I shoulda' just thrown them in the trash and came here in the first place but I would have never guessed such a generous and helpful bunch of folks existed. I'm not a computer or electronics whiz and knew I would have a hell of a time making this work on my own which was my reason for buying from a seller who claimed to include instructions to make it all work together.
    Now I can't really say I feel like I was ripped off because all the componets I bought seem to be good quality and it works when configured correctly. Considering the prices I'm seeing asked for this stuff today I feel like I got a good deal pricewise on the componets but the instructions are worthless and I'd probally been less frustrated had they not been included at all.
    I may have gotten frustrated and given up,(or at least had to walk away and take several breaks in progress) had it not been for the GREAT support I found here! This truly IS a support forum.
    Thank You to All who have held my hand to this point, especially Hood, Chaoticone & Overloaded. Now I'm on to the alarm circuit, probally end up needing help with that as well, Hope I haven't got you guys burnt out on me yet.

                      Thanks All, Very greatfull, Rick

67

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: April 04, 2013, 09:21:51 PM »

OK, thinking about it some more. You guys are Mach 3 experts, if a Mach setting could cause this you would have seen it before and told me where to look or what to check. Gotta be a parameter, but between the goofy wording in the translation of manual and my inexperience at setting up servo drives I just aint seeing it yet.
            Rick

68

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: April 04, 2013, 09:01:40 PM »

DAMNIT !!
    I just made the temp install of the Scorpion, Good news ; I now have the single ended outputs from the BOB feeding the driver board inputs, differential outputs from driver board going to servo drive inputs, NO SMOKE and it works. BAD NEWS; works the same as before, motor cw rotation in BOTH jogging directions. WTF !!! I read the servo manual AND Mach manual last week, tried changing a couple drive parameters, same results, changed them back. There is something I don't see or understand somewhere, starting to pi** me off! I wanna see these motors rotate both ways when jogging different directions but just can't get it to happen I guess I need to read some more but not now , too damn mad.
   Rick

69

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: April 04, 2013, 07:00:50 PM »

You going to mount it with the holes? They were originally for the DB25 connector but are not being used now so should be a reasonable place to mount with standoffs.
Hood

Good day Hood,
    Yes I thought the db25 holes would be a good place for the standoffs as well, glad you approve. I couldn't decide between the servo on deactivate or the inhibit activate, I will take your advice to activate the Inhibit. I still have a little research and experimenting to do on the relay and how to implement it, drives say 50 Ma max draw on alarm out. I have a "ice cube" relay that specs coil at 36 Ma so could probally safely use drive to operate it directly,I have the proper diode to reverse bias across coil to shunt emf. But I have been looking into using a transistor as a switch, let drive trigger transistor and transistor carry/switch coil current. As I've said I'm NOT an electronics guy but I'm interested  and want to learn, have been reading about the transistor as a switch deal and may do some bench testing just for the experience and education. I've always wanted to know more about electronics and I have a large box full of old boards I've saved just for harvesting parts. If I let some of the magic smoke out ,no biggie.
         Rick

70

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: April 04, 2013, 06:08:45 PM »

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