Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

Quick post,
Still very much a work in progress. However proof of concept for using the Ether1616 to control a stepper motor.
This is intended to replace the stepper on the A-Axis I currently use for the tool changer

Regards,
Michael

Interesting. Given that the outputs are relays, how do you control the angle of movement? I assume you have something reasonably intelligent downwind of the relays to interpret the signals and convert them to motion eg an Arduino, then send it basic commands such as "increment carousel" etc? I'd love to know more, as I plan something similar for my Ether1616 and ATC at some stage.

I am using a Velocio Ace PLC. It has an inbuilt stepper control & inexpensive. You can see it on the top left of the panel.
It is setup using 4 output bits from the Ether 1616 to control position, 4 bit grey code for 16 positions.
Then an enable/initiate bit to trigger movement once the desired position has been registered.
The PLC will then send an output to indicate when move is complete.
I have not got it 100% yet but will post up the logic when done.

From the font of the machine with code running.
Need to work of acceleration & deceleration as quite a bit of jerk in the motor movement.

mick41zxr wrote: ↑Sun Jan 12, 2020 6:11 am From the font of the machine with code running.
Need to work of acceleration & deceleration as quite a bit of jerk in the motor movement.

Just use the Centroid axis driven PLC. You need a proximity sensor to tell the control where tool one is. Let CNC12 do it all. When you home the machine, CNC12 will search for tool 1 and home to it and set it.

Marty

Marty,
That is basically what I have. I am using the ACE plc to generate the step & direction signals where Acorn tells the motor to rotate via 4 bit gray code.

mick41zxr wrote: ↑Sun Jan 12, 2020 5:57 pm Marty,
That is basically what I have. I am using the ACE plc to generate the step & direction signals where Acorn tells the motor to rotate via 4 bit gray code.

OK, so you are saving the 4th axis for well...a 4th axis?

Hopefully one day, I had the system running off A axis quite well. There was also the challenge to see if I could do It.

The other option is if you can put one sensor on tool 1 and then another sensor to COUNT tools as they pass, the control could work that way as well.
On my Emcoturn 140, I used a Geckodrive G216 to drive a stepper motor AS a motor, which is a cool feature.

Just rambling thoughts for you...It is cool you got it running on a PLC.

Marty do you have details or link on your Emcoturn setup. All info is usefull, as the idea is to make the process as reliable as possible.
Thanks