Suggestions for Servo Control?
- gschoep
- Offline
- New Member
- Posts: 6
- Thank you received: 1
Does anyone have experience with the Vigilant PCI boards? I can find very little documentation, only a mention of the driver in download.gna.org/tuxcnc/design_notes.pdf .
4.3.6 Driver: vigilant-pci
Discontinued (?) multifunction IO card from Vigilant Products. Basic ver-
sion provides four encoders, four DACs and eight IO lines. Optional expansion
includes 128 bits of IO and an additional four encoder/DAC module.
Has anyone used this board or know if this driver works?
What hardware do people usually use for analog servo control? I see that Gecko makes some drivers that accept step and direction for servos but I want to use the existing drivers in the control that accept +-10v.
Thanks in advance!
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- PCW
- Away
- Moderator
- Posts: 17870
- Thank you received: 4769
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- gschoep
- Offline
- New Member
- Posts: 6
- Thank you received: 1
And personally I would like a little more information in a central location, such as the Integrators Manual ( www.linuxcnc.org/docs/EMC2_Integrator_Manual.pdf ). The Vigilant board is not in the Integrators manual.
It looks like there is some good info on the Vital systems board, Motenc-Lite Servo PCI.
In the post MESA 7I43 and 7I33 OR 5I20 and 7I33 OR MOTENC-LITE(7544) Dave Engvall suggests:
However, some of this documentation may not be available anymore. So I would still like to know if anyone out there has experience with analog servo drivers and EMC2.The Mazak emc conversion at "EMC" fest a few years ago used the Motenc-Lite board.
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?MazakRetro
If you need ADC's then this is the board to use; otherwise the mesa boards are just fine.
The only other board I know of that has ADC's is the servo-to-go board which only works with an ISA bus motherboard.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- BigJohnT
- Offline
- Administrator
- Posts: 7330
- Thank you received: 1176
After some searching the seems to be a vti driver for the Vigilant Technologies PCI-ENCDAC 4 channel card as well as a sample config named vti. I'll try and find out if it is still supported.
TuxCNC is not part of EMC2 so any documents for TuxCNC are not about EMC2.
Regards
John
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- BigJohnT
- Offline
- Administrator
- Posts: 7330
- Thank you received: 1176
Regards
John
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- gschoep
- Offline
- New Member
- Posts: 6
- Thank you received: 1
I did find the sample configurations and can use those to start but it seems that there is much more info in general on steppers than servos. Wish step_config worked with servos too!! It is a breeze to setup a machine with that tool. Been there, done that.
I am still selecting a servo board so documentation is a big deal. Once I get the servo board and install it and can then load the sample configs then I will have many more questions I am sure. But I am trying to minimize those with a little homework.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- BigJohnT
- Offline
- Administrator
- Posts: 7330
- Thank you received: 1176
The Vigilant driver might have been written because someone had a board and needed a driver. That might explain the lack of documentation.
John
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Zig
- Offline
- Premium Member
- Posts: 125
- Thank you received: 1
I am runing with BLDC servo motors using CNC Teknix servo amps.
These are somewhat older amps( about two years old) connected to EMC software via conentional stepper configuration.
EMC does not know where the the hardware is actually since the loop is cllosed externaly outside EMC through the driver hardware.
Works a treat, easy to setup. CNC Teknix are I think developing a new interface which will be different to the old style ( paralelport) and which will feed back the encoder signals into the software waking it truly a closed loop system within software.
I hink they will also offer a sample hal file to assist with setup.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- gschoep
- Offline
- New Member
- Posts: 6
- Thank you received: 1
Unfortunately I am running some big servos with big drivers that would not economical to be changed.
They use +-10v so normal stepper configuration does me no good. But a good addition to the thread for future generations...
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- BigJohnT
- Offline
- Administrator
- Posts: 7330
- Thank you received: 1176
John
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.