Servo tuning problems

This is my frist try tuning with LinuxCNC

I am running a 5i25-7i77 combo. With some Teknics SST-3100-UCX drives in analog torque mode. servo period is 400000 (as low as I could get it without getting rtai error messages)

I have been trying to get a basic tune on the bench with one drive and motor before I started putting it on the machine, but I absolutely can not seem to get this thing stable. The motor is very "springy" and no amount of D seems to dampen it for me. Finally I hooked it up to the machine to see if more mass and friction would help and it did. I was able to get a decent movement up (against gravity) but it still rattled like crazy going down.

The attache halscope picture was a movement with my hand on the shaft to dampen it abit. It sure did not seem to be vibrating like the picture showed, it felt like a relatively smooth movement. Without my hand on the shaft it would have began to ossilate wildly durring the movement, but it does remain still when undisterbed

In torque mode you need to add P until it oscillates then D until its stable and the repeat (at some point D will simply make it worse)

If the motors are small enough to safely turn the shaft by hand, you can get a feel for what D does by setting all the
PID parameters to 0 except D, Now you should be able to turn the motor shaft by hand and "feel" the D term (viscous damping)

Motors in torque mode will be hard to tune without a load and sometimes need as much as 4 KHz update rates

That is what I've been trying, but as I add D, I can't seem to find any improvement. I can find the point that it starts to get worse though. With a P of about 100 and D at 12 I start to see a new wobble at about 1/2 the frequency of the P induced one that quickly goes out of control with further increases, but it still doesn't stop my first problem frequency oscillation.

Are there any tricks to getting a faster update rate. What kind of latency numbers do I need to see in order to bump my servo thread up from the 2.5Khz I have now. I am afraid I am not going to get 4Khz with this MB combination I am using now.

If it matters I used PNCconfig to make my basic setup.

When you say increase P till it oscillates. Do you mean oscillates when still or when disturbed or moved? I had assumed the latter. If you meant the former then maybe I just need to throw a whole lot more P at it.

Can any one give detailed instructions on how to use at_PID?

I know most others haven't had much success with it, but what's the harm in trying?

Teknics SST-3100-UCX drives in analog torque mode

In this page www.teknic.com/products/servo_drive.php Teknics SST-3100-UCX is not a torque drive.
May you give me a link to the PDF user manual of this servo drive to see what can i do?... I do not promise you anything

If you follow the link for the drive on the page you referenced to the drive spec sheet pdf file. You will see that the UCX can do both digital step/dir or analog torque.

PCW wrote:

In torque mode you need to add P until it oscillates then D until its stable and the repeat (at some point D will simply make it worse)

If the motors are small enough to safely turn the shaft by hand, you can get a feel for what D does by setting all the
PID parameters to 0 except D, Now you should be able to turn the motor shaft by hand and "feel" the D term (viscous damping)

Motors in torque mode will be hard to tune without a load and sometimes need as much as 4 KHz update rates

I tried setting every thing to 0 except D and I could not feel any damping, some small jerks and growls but no damping. If I made D to large with every thing 0 it would take off spinning.

Then something is really broken. There is no way D by itself can do this