Thank you, David! But how do I set up inputs from home switches and limit switches? Alex David Szakovits wrote:

alex,

i asked almost the same question a couple weeks ago. this is a copy of what paul sent me. it was so useful that i am forwarding his instructions to you. it is all the documentation i needed. following this advice, my scale factors were off by a factor of 10, exactly. so it was obvious and easy to remedy.

Using a config that is known to work as a starting point is probably best. The /usr/local/emc/mill_inch_freq.ini is as good a choice as any with the added advantage of being linked to a desktop icon. The first set of parameters that will need changing will be OUTPUT_SCALE and INPUT_SCALE to match the stepper motors & feedscrews. Assuming a 1:1 gearing, no step multipliers in the Gecko drives, and standard 200 steps/rev motors, the correct number would be: TPI * 200

Once the scales have been set, you can play around with the velocity and acceleration parameters - A general rule of thumb here is the max velocity can be found by taking 1/([EMCMOT]PERIOD * OUTPUT_SCALE) divide by five so that you don't trigger following errors at high speed..

Once you have found the maximum accelerations and velocities, turn them down to the lowest values that are acceptable - You are tuning for longevity not the fastest way to wear out a machine.

If you wish to sidestep tuning of PID parameters, change the EMCMOT driver from freqmod to quickstep.

alex wrote:

...

Hi, folks! I was able to install latest BDI with great success! I have a 4 axis machine, a punch press. All axes are linear. How do I set up an ini file, were can i find a manual for this? Can I use a sherline inch EMC - it looks great! Alex _______________________________________________ Bdi4emc-help mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bdi4emc-help

_______________________________________________ Bdi4emc-help mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bdi4emc-help

Alex,

Thank you, David! But how do I set up inputs from home switches and limit switches? Alex

I suggest consulting the User Manual found here: http://www.linuxcnc.org/docs/EMC2_User_Manual.pdf Specifically the HAL tutorial in chapter II (Configuring EMC2). The handling of the I/O is mainly done in the hal files, not the ini files. But the hal files will probably look like Greek if you do not go through the tutorial. Because basically everything that you do manually in this tutorial, particularly those things done through halcmd, will be basically what you enter into the hal files to configure your I/O. If you understand how to use halcmd, it should then be a fairly easy step to start editing your hal files. Regards, Eric

Alex, You are correct, I missed that part of the thread. I am sure you answered this elsewhere, but if you are just getting into EMC, what is your reason for using EMC as opposed to EMC2? Regards, Eric

My understanding was that EMC version of BDI doesn't have HAL layer. I may be wrong. Alex

Hi Alex On Friday 01 December 2006 18:33, alex wrote:

My understanding was that EMC version of BDI doesn't have HAL layer. I may be wrong.

A brief history of the version of EMC on the BDI disk for you - I was asked to produce an updated BDI CD to replace the original BDI-2 disk that had been around for a number of years. At the time, I was working on stripping down the core libraries that emc2 uses along with the build system (in conjunction with a couple of other people).. emc2 was a long way from being ready for anything, so I took the parts of EMC that were known to work along with the build system & library from emc2 and made a few changes so that the whole lot would compile with a 2.6 series kernel. The 2.6 kernel support eventually making it's way back in to the main emc2 development tree. The plan was to migrate over to emc2 when it had moved from being "proof of concept" to stable - Neither goals have yet to be met, and if anything, the code has become more unstable and the build system is now so fragile, even small changes will cause it to fail. Since emc2's fork from Sourceforge, the developers involved appear to target umbuntu installations and ignoring any other Linux distribution. [Side note] Ubuntu is based on Debian's testing branch (bugs'n'all) while the BDI-4 uses Debian's stable branch (still with a few bugs), so both share a common root. Despite the best efforts of <..>, emc2 will compile on a BDI-4 install, and if you have the latest CD, emc2.0.4 is included - You will need to install it manually and run it from the command line though.. To install any additional package from the CD, you can use Synaptic and click on 'Edit->Add CD-ROM' before selecting emc2. If you prefer the command line: sudo apt-cdrom add sudo apt-get install emc2 The "adding of CD-ROM" only needs to be done once, should you want to install any other package, go straight to the "install" stage. Regards, Paul.

Paul - this is great - I don't see the problem with this! But can you shed some light on setting limit and home switches? I eyeballed hardware section of the manual for some time and it looks like they are hardwired for this version of EMC ? Are they wired this way: homes - pin 12 limits + -pin 15 limits - - pin 13 ? Also , how can I ignore homing for Z axis? Alex Paul wrote:

Hi Alex

On Friday 01 December 2006 13:22, alex wrote:

...

I was able to install latest BDI with great success! I have a 4 axis machine, a punch press. All axes are linear. How do I set up an ini file, were can i find a manual for this? Can I use a sherline inch EMC - it looks great!

You will find a number of pdf documents in the Documents directory on the CD. These are a little out of date unfortunately, but they should cover most of the basics.

Starting with a working ini file is always a good plan - The scale settings would be the first parameters to change, as these probably won't match your machine(s).. After that, the min & max limits, velocities, and accelerations can be adjusted. Much of the tuning is trial and error I'm afraid.

Regards, Paul.

_______________________________________________ Bdi4emc-help mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bdi4emc-help

Kudos to you Paul for your high brow and highly diplomatic overview of the EMC/EMC2 BDI/Umbootoo :) frackus. Stable is better. Hunting bugs instead of running a machine dont make money. Looks to me the like the emc users sourceforge list (on the rare occasions I have looked back) has turned into a Umbootoooo support support group in large part. that hardware abstraction layer thing was well intended and all but seems to have added just another file to diddle, that you have to learn how to diddle to get EMC to work for you if the defalt setup wont work for you. Is that faster than moving a few wires in a connector or reconfiguring a drive, likely not. The breakout-I/O-stepper board I made uses the old EMC lpt pinout as the default but will work on the DOS and windoze based controllers to, but I havnt felt the need to try them since I went back to BDI after trying to use EMC2. In fairness I should say they do indicate they have fixed a lot of bugs since I tried it last. rock on paul! Mark On 12/1/06, Paul <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Alex

On Friday 01 December 2006 17:50, alex wrote:

...

But can you shed some light on setting limit and home switches? I eyeballed hardware section of the manual for some time and it looks like they are hardwired for this version of EMC ? Are they wired this way: homes - pin 12 limits + -pin 15 limits - - pin 13 ? Also , how can I ignore homing for Z axis?

The home and limit switches are hard coded in to the sources. For many users, this limitation is not a problem, but for others, it is, so there is work afoot to address this and other issues (more on that when the time comes).

As for ignoring the homing on a single axis - If the axis with the home switches use HOME_SWITCH_POLARITY=0, set HOME_SWITCH_POLARITY=1 for the axis without a switch - As long as pin 12 is pulled high when X and Y are not sitting on their respective switches, Z will always be evaluated as "homed". Set the HOME and HOME_OFFSET parameters so that the homed axis does not sit on a switch and you shouldn't have any problems.

Regards, Paul.

_______________________________________________ Bdi4emc-help mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bdi4emc-help

-- "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Hi Alex On Sunday 03 December 2006 21:18, alex wrote:

I need to have 3 axes homed. Is it possible with present setup?

Yes, you can have all three homed. Each axis will need to be homed separately and moved off the home switch before the next can be homed. If one axis is not fitted with a home switch, then the postition would need to be zero'd manually each time you power the system up as EMC wouldn't have a fixed reference point to work from. Regards, Paul.

Hi David On Monday 04 December 2006 04:26, David Szakovits wrote:

On page 39    Master_User.pdf it says a full suite of home and limit switches can be    implemented with independent wires, if 2 more parallel ports are    added.

There is also a cross reference to page 30 of the Integrator.pdf doc that refers to another section on "Using the parallel port" - This last section appears to be missing.. Without some additional code, it would not be possible to use a second parallel port to read home or limit switches.

   if there are 5 inputs, for a three axis machine, does it make sense to    have use 3 inputs for home switches and then combine the limit    switches?    Are the limit switches, useful for more than a safety feature for    turning the motors off in case of a mishap?

For any machine using all but the smallest of stepper motors, limit switches are an essential safety feature. Even a Sherline mill with the factory fitted stepper motors can suffer damage if the table is run to the limit of travel at high speed. As to the question of common home switches, homing each axis in sequence is not a major chore and only needs to be done once on power up..

   In EMC(1). are the pinouts customized by changing configuration files    or is it more involved?

Unfortunately, the pinouts are hard coded - If you are familiar with the process of compiling, the changes are fairly minor.. For the parallel port driver, the file to edit would be extsmmot.c in the src/drivers directory. Not a very satisfactory solution if you do not know C - User defined pinouts has been on the cards for a long while, it was what prompted HAL until it went off the rails. If you can bear with us for a while longer, the configuration files will be revamped and the issue of user defined pinouts addressed - Multiple parallel ports had not been considered, but it should probably be added to the list at some stage. Regards, Paul.

Paul, I never thought of this possibility, mainly because I wanted to make operation of the machine not requiring any manual input. I also looked at HAL concept. It looks that to master it I have to enroll on at least 6 month course in a college. But I just remembered, I have Jon Elson's add on card, which I purchased 3 years ago but never had a chance to try. How hard is it to make it going with EMC? Alex Paul wrote:

Hi Alex

On Sunday 03 December 2006 21:18, alex wrote:

...

I need to have 3 axes homed. Is it possible with present setup?

Yes, you can have all three homed. Each axis will need to be homed separately and moved off the home switch before the next can be homed. If one axis is not fitted with a home switch, then the postition would need to be zero'd manually each time you power the system up as EMC wouldn't have a fixed reference point to work from.

Regards, Paul.

_______________________________________________ Bdi4emc-help mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bdi4emc-help

Paul, basically my configuration is very straight forward. 4 axises step/direction output. 4 inputs - 3 for home switches for X, Y A axises and 1 for the limit switch. There should be enough pins on a standart parport to cover all this. May be to change io-somethig file in C and rebuild the program - it may be the easiest solution? We are not talking about rocket science here... Regards, Alex Paul wrote:

Hi Alex

On Monday 04 December 2006 16:24, alex wrote:

...

I never thought of this possibility, mainly because I wanted to make operation of the machine not requiring any manual input.

So far, I've only described possible configurations in very general terms. Without information about your specific requirements, it is difficut to go in to much detail..

...

I also looked at HAL concept. It looks that to master it I have to enroll on at least 6 month course in a college.

In the early stages of emc2 development, I voiced concerns over the cryptic syntax and the desire to spread configuration over multiple files.. But the developers chose to pander to the whims of one or two potential users rather than cater for the majority.

...

But I just remembered, I have Jon Elson's add on card, which I purchased 3 years ago but never had a chance to try. How hard is it to make it going with EMC?

The drivers for Jon's cards are included - The finer points of configuration would depend on which card(s) you have.. I don't have any of his hardware, so you'd need to email Jon directly for support, all I can offer is general guidance, and perhaps bug fixes to the drivers if required.

Regards, Paul.

_______________________________________________ Bdi4emc-help mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bdi4emc-help

Paul, currently I run a very nice Dos program, Desknc. In this program I can home all axises simultaneously whenever I want it. I want Emc to do the same. All my limits are ganged up in series - will work with one input. How hard is it to recompile Emc? More then one command? Alex Paul wrote:

Hi Alex

On Monday 04 December 2006 20:53, alex wrote:

...

4 axises step/direction output.

Not a problem, the standard parallel port provides sufficient outputs for that..

...

4 inputs - 3 for home switches for X, Y A axises and 1 for the limit switch.

Um.. only one limit switch per axis - That doesn't sound right unless you are connecting both positive and negative limit switches to the same input.. In which case the software will not know which limit has been triggered. As mentioned earlier, you don't need separate inputs for home switches. Homing is (generally) performed once on power up, and once each axis is homed, any further inputs will be ignored by EMC. If one axis is not fitted with a switch, the ini file can be set to ignore the input.

...

There should be enough pins on a standart parport to cover all this. May be to change io-somethig file in C and rebuild the program - it may be the easiest solution?

The file where the inputs are hard coded for the parallel port is src/emc/drivers/extsmmot.c

...

We are not talking about rocket science here...

Agreed.

Regards, Paul.

_______________________________________________ Bdi4emc-help mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bdi4emc-help