Hi List, We've had the Peddinghaus FDB600 in production for over a month now running with EMC2!
I'd like to thank all who helped me get this machine working. Help was provided to me via email and over irc. For those who don't know the machine, it's a two-axis three-spindle drilling rig, with a flame cutter. The Y axis is carriage with the drills and torch on, and the material - steel plate - is moved through the machine as the X axis. Drives are 18kW servos - it'll move a 6m length of 25 mm thick, 500 mm wide plate at several tens of cm per second, but crucially, EMC2 keeps the positional accuracy _well_ within the tolerances required for the plates, which go into steel building structures. I used a Mesa 5i20 board for all i/o, including the servo drives (with a Mesa 7i33 daughter board). I translated 3V3 signals at the 5i20 into 24V signals for the machine with a single, custom designed (using GNU/Geda and PCB) circuit board. All of the machine logic is carried out in HAL components - The comp tool was very useful to enable me to quickly build and test HAL components without having to write all the boilerplate C. I steadfastly refused to use classicladder ;) Not that I think there is anything wrong with it, I just found the HAL components easy to write and understand. I developed a very simple custom interface using pyvcp which gives the operator visual feedback on the machine state. Programs are fed to the machine using a python script (based on jdi.py), which loops continuously and when it finds a new program in a given directory on the filesystem, it loads it into EMC2, then waits for the operator to press a (real physical) "Go" button on the machine. The job is processed, then the python script waits for the next program. It's simple and effcient. Programs are generated straight from the drawing office using a perl script which converts from a format output by the CAD software into G code. The operator chooses from available jobs in a web browser - then the new G code program is created in the directory scanned by the python script. Thanks again for all the help, with best regards, Seb James -- Embedded Software Foundry Ltd. Sheffield, UK. Tel: +44 (0)845 4580277 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
