2 Mesa Cards

I went with the 7i33 because I had planed to change to servos. I actually have the motors and amplifiers on order and plan to change it next week.

It defiantly will get used in the future.

These things have a way of not working for one project but being perfect for another.... Next time, I will be posting if i am the least bit unsure.

Thanks for the help

where are you located ?
their are a few differences between the GS2 and GS3 , mostly to do with the pid values and a few extra registers , i'll take a closer look , but unfortunatly i dont have a GS3 to hand to test
can you post your modbus register list and your hal file , i'll take a look . and see if i can see anything

yes i'd agree John , they look just about identical , apart from the pid registers are not used in the GS2 , and the added encoder of course , i'm wondering if somehow it's trying to access say one of the pid registers and because of an error returned it's crashing out ... hence the erratic movement or stop .

it could of course be a simple matter of grounding or earth loop tripping the modbus , or bad rs232 etc , if the supply is not clean ,
( are the serial cables sheilded all the way etc ) i must admit i hate using convertors or multiples of

so question is , is it totaly happening at random , or is their a repeatable sequence triggering this event

I am located in Costa Rica.

The error seems to be random. Right now I am making 1000 of the same parts. I will make 10 parts - no problem. Then I will make 1 part and it will stop 3 times during the part. I feed hold the machine. Then I have a button to unable the spindle and then reenable it, and everything starts again.

I checked in hal and the control thinks the motor is turning (except the encoder speed is at 0). When you look at the drive it shows it stopped and no errors... To me, it seems that it is losing the signal - which is why I thought it was my hardware. It may well be something else I have wrong or the cheap card with the cheap adapter.

Attached is my Hal File.

I am not sure what is meant by modbus register list? (Probably a newbie question....)

The cables are not shielded. The length of the cable from the computer to the drive is about 2 feet and I am using CAT 5 cable. I am thinking of getting CAT 6 cable. The drive uses a RJ12 connector which is why I used the CAT 5 Cable.

could it be my communication protocol setup on the drive. I have it set to: MODBUS RTU mode, 8 data bits, no parity, 2 stop bits, 9600 transmission speed. There is also a option for MODBUS ASCII. Should I be using the ASCII?

Thanks
Brian

Brian ,
certianly shielded cables should always be used , this may well be your problem , use good screened cable try and keep the RJ12 close to the sheath but do not connect the shield at this end , make sure the sheild goes right back to the card , having adapters is not ideal ,

having intermittent problems such as this , do ( but not always the case ) point to possibley pick up of interference from say a motor starting or dirty contact etc

Also for VFDs a common mode choke (a giant ferrite bead basically)
around all three motor leads (U,V,W) can help a lot to reduce noise
induced by the square wave PWM from the VFD driving into the winding
to ground capacitance of the motor