Messages

81

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: March 24, 2013, 06:06:45 PM »

Thanks for clearing that up Hood,
      As I mentioned before the BOB is only outputting 3.3v on the dir out. So with meter connected I see 3.3v when jogging one way and 0.12v when jogging the other.
  Rick

82

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: March 24, 2013, 05:18:07 PM »

Howdy Russ,
    I'm looking over parameters now to see if I can notice a problem. When you suggest checking with a meter at termination point am I understanding that the com & + should switch places where they leave the BOB. What I mean is if I connect meter to gnd & dir  at BOB, jog one way meter would read say, 5v,then when jogging the other way without moving meter leads it should read -5v?         
                         Rick

83

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: March 24, 2013, 04:20:51 PM »

Hello All,
    To anyone who has followed this you know I followed the instructions supplied by the seller of my servo drives & motors & had no response from the motors when I thought I was good to go.After a lot of help and advise from the GREAT members of this forum it was determined the drives don't play well with the single ended signals supplied by BOB to drives, really need differential line drivers.Was also determined the BLOCK WIRING DIAGRAM for drives & Mach 3 were INCOMPLETE AND INACCURATE !! Power was not being supplied to the drive control,the drive inhibit,cw inhibit & ccw inhibits were ALL active,(hard to get anything out of drives with all those inhibits activated). And the "servo on" input was not being powered. HELL, no wonder it didn't work,the control wasn't powered and if it had been the drive was  'turned off' about 4 different ways.Them there was some mighty fine instructions I got with the drives.
    Well I still don't have the line drivers yet but not seeing these motors work was driving me NUTS,(some would say that's a pretty short drive). So I reconfigured the inputs and decided to see if anything would happen given the single ended step/dir signals.
    Progress Update
                               I Have motors that move !!

    At this point I have seen all 3 motors work and one drive seems OK. I only "rigged" one input cable and thus far only have one encoder cable made and didn't swap them to the other 2 drives for a test but I have more confidence now that they are OK. I connected all 3 motors (one at a time of course),jogged them with Mach and ran each one through the "auto gain tuning" routine built into the drives.YIPPIE! I do have a problem though, when jogging in Mach the motors only rotate one way. The auto gain tuning routine rotates motor 2 revs each way back & forth several times at increasing speeds and that worked as it should so I know motors CAN rotate both ways, just isn't doing it through Mach jogging. The motor does rotate when jogging either way, but it's the SAME direction for pgup/pgdn and also the same way when using Z+/Z- on the MPG flyout. Any ideas what's going on?
            Rick

84

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: March 24, 2013, 12:46:43 PM »

So does this mean I'm not the only one thinking of machine #2 before #1 is finished?
                        Rick

85

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: March 24, 2013, 10:52:43 AM »

Yea Brett,
    I've seen that done by folks that have a diy cnc machine that works, sure wish I had one.
             Rick


Just a little joke,please don't take offense.

86

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: March 24, 2013, 08:03:36 AM »

Thanks for the link Hood,
     But DAMN, looks like I really need to learn to make a pcb as the componets you suggest seem to always need one. BTW, that is a really neat, clean  & professional looking electrical cabinet you showed Dan there, looks like I'm getting advise from an EE, I better pay attention!
        Thanks , Rick

87

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: March 23, 2013, 08:23:34 PM »

OK thanks Hood,
      Great tip on another relay to take away drive enable in case Mach doesn't cover getting things stopped , I like redundancy where safety is concerned. Now I have to do some research on relays, I'm thinking a small "ice cube" relay is the ticket but drive manual says 50ma max on the alarm output and I have never had reason to know how much the 24v coil on an ice cube relay draws.
       Thanks for clearing up the other issue, I was hoping I wasn't a Mach 3 crook !
          Rick

88

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: March 23, 2013, 06:49:24 PM »

Another question.
    While waiting for the differential line drivers,which I hope will actually get my motors moving, I've been looking at the rewire of the servo drive cables. On the same connector where the step/dir commands are input I see an output labeled "ALM" ,servo alarm output, pin 26. If I should have a drive fault I would like Mach 3 to halt operation until the Alarm can be corrected. I've read that Mach doesn't use encoder feedback, but if a drive should alarm because of say a following error that drive would stop working, but if Mach doesn't know or acknowledge this alarm I presume it would continue to run the program which I bet would get ugly (expensive) with only 2 of 3 axis responding. I'm thinking the servo drive alarm output should operate a relay with Mach E-stop circuit going through a set of n.c. contacts so a drive alarm, (ANY drive alarm) would halt Mach operation.
    Is my thinking correct on this, and if so what is the best way to let Mach know there is a drive problem and stop operation ?
                         Rick


P.S.  I tried to do a search on this & didn't get any matches. But I DID stumble across a thread about encoder feedback where the poster was WARNED about being an illegal user of Mach 3. I'm just using the Demo version at this time which I thought was recommended until my machine is working and I'm sure Mach 3 does run my set-up. If it does then I WILL purchase Mach 3. I'm I using Mach 3 correctly or illegally?

89

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: March 21, 2013, 07:38:50 PM »

Hey Ray,
    I emailed them yesterday about expected delivery date & got no reply today.  I think I might have another option working now. But thank you for the info on CNC4PC, hope you get your drivers soon.
      Rick

90

General Mach Discussion / Re: Panasonic servo drive help

« on: March 21, 2013, 06:30:20 PM »

UGLY ! ! ! !    Hey ... it works. ... and I was pretty proud of it, being I was more intimidated than you at the time.  (just funnin', no offense taken.

I don't want to or intend to insult anyone but YOUR'S ain't the one I was thinking of.
                                        Rick