Mesa 7i78 + 7i92M: how to setup spindle control?

Hello,

my simple 3-axis CNC mill is powered by a 7i92M mesa card now with a 7i78 plugged directly into it.
All is working fine since over a year, so i'm really, really happy with LinuxCNC so far!

For milling i use a 1.5kW china spindle + Siemens Sinamics V20 VFD.
Until now i just set up everything by hand on the VFD itself: so start/stop and frequency/ RPMs.
I would really like to do this via linuxcnc.
So i connected VFD and 7i78 (enable and 0-10V) and tried my luck with the stepconf-wizard.
However i'm too newbie to get this running.

(On another machine the same VFD works with enable/ 0-10V control on a very cheap atmega-based controller.)

I guess this can only be done with editing the config files?

Best regards,
minimal3d

If you already have a working configuration its is probably easiest to just
add the spindle analog parts of the hal/ini file

One way to do this (assuming you used pnccconf to create the original
hal/ini file set), would be to create a new configuration for similar hardware
(something with PWM --> analog) say a G540 config and add the PWM spindle
setup to that configuration. When done you could use the new configuration as
a copy/paste donor to add the PWM spindle setup to your existing ha/ini files.

(make sure you give a different name to the new configuration so you don't
overwrite your existing config)

Hello,

just a small and delayed update: i didn't manage to get the VFD setup working at all.
So i still control the VFD by hand without mesa card on this machine. That's it.

(However on another machine i use a brand new 7i96S mesa card. Here everything just works.
I can switch the VFD on/off. Also the spindle speed can be controlled. The VFD is of the same type Sinamics V20.
With the help of some YouTube Videos i managed to get the config files working.)

Best regards,
minimal3d

You could basically steal all the spindle related hal/ini
stuff from your 7I96S configuration and add it to the 7I92/7I78 files
and it should work the same. You would need to change the card
name and the output pin setup for the VFD FWD/REV or DIR/ENA pins