Run Mesa 7i76e + 7i85 with 3 servos and 1 stepper motor

Hi,

I run a 4-axis DIY milling machine with servo motors. In the moment, I try to put a carousel atc in service. The carousel (10 pockets) is driven by a closed loop stepper motor (stepper 60BYGH250D at leadshine CS-D508), not a servo. My first question: Is it possible to mix both servo and stepper motors controlled by one mesa 7i76e?

I use the probe_basic ui so I decided to try the carousel function from Andy Pugh ( linuxcnc.org/docs/2.8/html/man/man9/carousel.9.html ). Now I see in the manual, that there is required a minimum of 4 prox sensors. I only have one at the hardware (for homing), so I skip this idea. Or is it possible to use this function with a single prox sensor also?

Thanks & best regards
Marcus

PS: Please take my apologizes for my bad english - I'am from Germany

Hallo und wilkomen bei uns,
You can use servo and steppers and any combination of them. I am assuming you have the 3 servos running already, so just wire the closed loop stepper as a normal stepper, step/dir/ and enable if required/desired.
Also, pretty sure the Carousel component requires an index pin/sensor and another pin/sensor for pockets, Andy will know that best as he programmed that component.
MFG,
Tom.

Currently the carousel component does require a pulse-per-pocket.
I have had an email kept in my inbox since 6/21 to remind me to improve this. But so far have failed to do so.

The improvement would be to define a counts-per-pocket scale. This would work equally well for a stepper or an encoder.

How many step counts are there per pocket on your system? There might be a very simple answer if it is a multiple of two.

Hi,

thanks a lot for the warm welcome And for your support.

This evening I put the stepper in work. Tomorrow I'll try to configure the homing sequence and figure out, how many steps are necessary to go from one pocket to another.

Best regards
Marcus

Hi Andy,

the stepgen.04.counts value show -2003 after homing. After jogging to the next pocket the value is -1803, than -1603 and so one -> the difference between the pockets are 200 steps.

So, is there a chance to use the carousel method? image missing /media/kunena/emoticons/w00t.png

Best regards
Marcus

Yes, I have modified carousel to support a new feedback type "counts" where the feedback is either stepgen or encoder counts.

This new mode requires that the number of counts (or steps) between pockets is set in the carousel.N.scale pin and the width (in counts) of the pockets should be set in the "carousel.N.width"

You can try this by downloading the attached file and using the command "sudo halcompile --install carousel.comp"