PnP feeder

So I know SMD Pick and Place machines is kind of an oddity for Linuxcnc however one of the possible machines I want to try linuxcnc on is an old Mancorp Pick and Place machine the X,Y,Z, and A axis is pretty straight forward, advancing the feeders however is not. I am sure I can treat them as a rack style ATC but I would need to advance the feeder after a component is picked up. Fortunately the mechanism that advances the feeder is a pneumatic cylinder that is on a seperate
3 position slide so that one cylinder can advance 3 different feeders ( obviously not at the same time ). This machine has a total of
48 feeder slots ( 24 per side ).
16 feeder advancing cylinders ( 8 per side )
4 rack position cylinders ( 2 per side )
and I have to have 2 more air / vacuum control solenoids for the head to pickup and release of the components when placing them . Which means I need to control 22 separate pneumatic control solenoids :ohmy:

So I guess my question is are there any examples presumably rack style ATC setups that has to deal with multiple relays / solenoids?
That way I can figure out how to do it.
hopefully I have enough I/O pins to make it work ( 6i25 and 7i76 )

sorry I don't have more pics I hope to load up more soon.

7i76 = 16 outputs
But there are two 26 pin headers on it, so you have access to 34 more input or output pins at 5V.
For more, we would have to know what and how those cylinders function, but i would not go with the ATC idea, i would try to do everything in hal, strictly. Not sure if that is possible in your case, as that requires much more info.

thanks tommylight I will try looking into that route . As I said I know PnP is a bit of an oddity for LinuxCnC plus no ready made GUI's for it there's a program called OpenPnP that's mostly ready to go but it has 1 major flaw it relies on Windows .

EDIT - I later found out that it is compatible with Linux. Thank you Aciera for bringing that to my attention.

PnP positioning is easy, the orientation is easy, camera and the link between them might be a challenge.
Seen some of the small machines being sold for a lot of money that have no way of working ever as the positioning is not done properly, let alone other stuff.
Not helping...
BTW, there are another 17 IO pins on the 6i25 you can use, in total 51 IO pins plus 16 outputs and 32 inputs. IO's are programmable so they can be input or output.
Does that thing work at all or is there any video of it working where the functioning can be seen ? That would help in deciding what method of control to use.

there is a very similar machine that is operational ( a few years newer ) I have to wait for them to run a job on it to get some video. for now though here are some pics I took while I was there today



those two cylinders are what moves the rack into 1 of 3 positions. position 1 both cylinders off . position 2 one cylinder is on. position 3 both cylinders are on



this one shows the advancer cylinders when 1 is activated the white cap extends about an inch to push the advancer arm. when off
an internal spring retracts it.



this is what the cylinders look like underneath



a top view with the feeders still in place



the new 6i25 with an additional DB25 connector above it



view of the plugs

Just came across this:

yurtaev.com/mysetup.html

He's also made his config available on github