| the PWM controller board | PWM controller, power supply and 4 PWM amplifiers | |
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Advantages:
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3-axis block diagram |
Complete PWM drive systems Pico Systems is currently evaluating the price point at which we could make complete drive boxes available. The big items here are electromagnetic compatibility (FCC) and safety testing.
The Universal PWM Servo Controller is a small board with everything needed to control a 2-, 3- or 4 axis machine tool with PWM-driven servo amplifiers. It contains 4 PWM generators with variable PWM drive frequency, 4 digital encoder counters to follow the machine position, 16 channels of opto-isolated digital inputs, and 8 positions for Solid State Relays of your choice to be mounted. It is connected to a computer by the parallel port. The parallel port must be at least capable of bi-directional exchange of data, but EPP or ECP modes give the best data transfer rate. The digital I/O section also implements emergency stop logic. There is an on board watchdog timer, which can be set to cause an emergency stop in case the computer fails to update the PWM generators in a timely fashion. This could shut off the servo amps, spindle motor, coolant, etc. For machines with more than 4 axes, 2 or more boards can be used together.
The computer reads the position from the encoder counters and computes a new PWM duty cycle to send to the PWM generators. This takes only about 50 uS on a 333 MHz Pentium II, so that reasonable servo update rates of 10 KHz could be made on such a machine. I usually use 1 KHz, because that is all that seems needed for machine-tool type applications.
The PWM generators divide a 10 MHz crystal clock by a minimum of 2 up to 216-1, which comes out to 5 MHz down to 153 Hz. A PWM frequency of 1 to 100 KHz is practical, and can be selected to suit the servo amplifiers. The duty cycle of the PWM waveform can be programmed in 100 nS steps, which is 1% at 100 KHz, but .2% at 20 KHz. The PWM and direction outputs can source or sink 12 mA to drive opto-coupled amplifier inputs.
The encoder counters keep a continuous watch over the encoder signals and can count up to 300,000 encoder counts/second, per channel. (The rev 5.x and later boards have an adjustable digital filter so that counting above 5 MHz can be performed.) They can also sense the index pulse from an encoder which has this feature. This can be used to more precisely locate the home position. If the encoder has no index channel, connect the index input (Z) to A.
The digital input section has 16 optoisolators which can sense the condition of switches, relays, pressure switches, float sensors, etc. to allow the machine to be stopped if a fault condition occurs, sense when an axis is close to the travel limit or home position, etc. The board provides isolated 5V power to power the switches and/or sensors.
The digital output section provides sockets for up to 8 Opto-22 compatible Solid State Relays to be mounted directly onto the board. These sites are left unpopulated to allow the user to select SSRs with the output configuration and current capacity needed. A terminal strip is provided for connection to the outputs of the SSRs. LEDs monitor the command signal to each of the SSRs.
The last digital input is configured to monitor an emergency stop chain. A series circuit of normally-closed switches breaks the continuity of the circuit when an unsafe condition or problem develops (ie. spindle motor stall, servo amp overheat, lube level low, manual E-stop switch activated, etc.) An analog timer circuit can also monitor the flow of commands from the computer, and if the computer ceases updating the rate generators, then an E-stop can be caused. The E-stop condition turns off all signals to the solid state relays, as well as stopping the PWM generators, to bring the machine to a safe stop.
This boards contains a power regulator that produces all power needed by it from a provided 'wall-wart' type plug-in power supply.
The Universal PWM Controller takes advantage of the IEEE-1284 hardware signalling protocol, allowing multiple register addresses to be selected and transfers accomplished with minimum CPU overhead, and maximum data transfer rate. This requires a parallel port that can operate in the ECP or EPP mode. A male-female DB-25 cable specifically designed for IEEE-1284 compatability is required. Note: You MUST use a cable marked "IEEE-1284 compliant" for this system to work reliably.
Also, if using a PCIe parallel port card, it has been discovered that Startech, SIIG and Rosewill cards with the OXPCIe952 chip will not work with LinuxCNC versions before 2.7.8 (March 14, 2017). (PCI (not express) cards from SIIG have worked fine for years.) The Saba PCIe card with the NetMos MCS9900 chip has been verified to work, as well as other PCIe cards with the MCS9900 and MCS9901 chips.
Drivers for the EMC CNC motion program are included on all CDROM releases of EMC.
Pico Systems is currently delivering this board at an end-user cost of US $250.
Sample configs files for LinuxCNC using the Universal PWM board
Sample configs files for LinuxCNC using the UPC with the spindle DAC
Sample configs files for LinuxCNC using the UPC with 8 extra digital outputs
Sample configs files for LinuxCNC using the UPC with Spindle Sync for threading
Connector Pinouts for the Universal PWM board
Register Definition for the Universal PWM board
Switch Settings on the Universal PWM board
Parallel port compatibility and options
Download Linux diagnostic program for Universal PWM Controller.
How to install and use the diagnostic program.
Sample wiring of the Universal PWM board
Sample wiring of the Universal PWM board with the PWM Power Switch
Dimensional drawing of the Universal PWM board
You can contact Pico Systems at :
(314) 965-5523
or
543 Lindeman Rd.
Kirkwood, MO 63122
or
elson@pico-systems.com