Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

Good evening,

First post for me! I’ve recently converted a knee mill to run the X and Y axis with an Acorn. Everything is working well, but I would like to use the DB9 port for a glass scale on the quill (Acurite ENC 150). I am able to get it to give me feedback through the spindle encoder as shown in the manual, but I would like it to read as the Z axis on the main screen when I manually move the quill up and down. How do I configure this in the wizard?

Thanks in advance,
Chris

You won't be able to do this with the wizard but should be able by setting up a manual axis in CNC12 and assigning the encoder port to it in the parameters.

This tech bulletin may help:
https://www.centroidcnc.com/centroid_di ... ds/292.pdf

Thanks for the help everyone. I followed the technical bulletin that Marty provided. I feel that I’m on the right track, but I am not getting anything to display on the manual Z axis. It just remains at zero when you move the scale up and down. I did notice that the technical bulletin was not originally directed towards acorn.

My parameters are set as the following.
P310-3
P302-0
P259-4

I have also attempted to change P310 to 10 to correspond with P 10 on the acorn schematic. Additionally, I have cycled the spindle encoder on and off in the wizard with no luck. When turned on, the scale reads as spindle speed, but that is all.

Any additional help would be greatly appreciated.
-Chris

Your scale provide a line driver differential output?

How are you connecting it to the Acorn DB9?

I think this is your manual? Looks like several types
https://www.acu-rite.com › pdfPDF
Web results
ENC 150 - ACU-RITE

Sorry Marty, I’m not fully understanding the question. I’m using the DB9 connection on the acorn board to connect my z-axis scale as a manual read out.

I have re-pinned the encoder to correspond with requirements of the centroid Acorn and pinout for the DB nine

First, you need to make sure the scale provides the correct signals and then yes, you have to match the signal wires to Acorn DB9

Did you go into the PID screen in CNC12 to see if you are getting any counts as you move the quill?
F1 Setup
F3 Config
137
F4 PID

Hopefully Tom or Marc will chime in

I have the DB9 pinned as shown in the acorn manual on page 45.

I went to the PID screen and the scale is reading on the fifth line down. This looks like good news, but how do I get it to read on the third line down with the “@“ symbol?

See photo

Try and set parameter 311 to 5 since the encoder port in Acorn is fixed at 5

I attempted to change 310, and 311 to “5” with no luck. Luckily, I do think I figured it out.

From the main screen, I went to
F1 setup
F3 config
Password 137
F2 Mach.
F2 Motor

In the motors parameters screen, instead of assigning the encoder to axis 3, I assigned it to axis 5. I still need to determine how many steps per revolution for my 2um scale, but I seem to be getting feedback in the Z read out now.

I will continue tomorrow afternoon to see if I have this problem completely solved or not. In the meantime, any tips or advice would be appreciated.

-Chris