ELS Software Updates and Troubleshooting Tips [Electronic Leadscrew Part 20]

EEVBlog! I love that Aussie bloke!

I would love to see a video describing the code that you wrote for the Launchpad -- organization, how each part works, and how it fits together. Great job on the whole project. A huge success!

James, I’m a little late to the party regarding your ELS, but bing watched your videos over the holidays. Well done. I’m collecting the parts I need (I already had a stepper and driver). I’ve done similiar work but mostly with Arduino so I’m looking for to learning a new platform. I’ve also reviewed all the info on Github but have not seen an “Instruction Manual” that describes the buttons, LED’s etc. Most are obvious and you addresed the PWR button in this video but what is the SET button for. Perhaps you’ve addressed this and I missed it.

My other question is regarding cable length. The encoder and control panel will be about 6 ft from the controller. The cables will be well isolated from any high voltage but I’m wondering if you or any readers have experience with this length.

Jim

What about using a parity bit in the communication? I know that it's overkill now, but it would be cool to have

You are a genius!
I don’t have a lathe yet, I did purchase the kit on eBay to support the Chanel I did put it together and work great
Thank you to share all that you have to offer
Yuri

Hi Folks. Solution to problem I made! I have a dual carriage feed. Normal lead screw and a separate feed shaft. I found that the ELS suddenly could not drive the feed shaft but could still move the lead screw although it's ability to do that decreased quite quickly. Convinced I had tried to operate the powered cross table drive with the table locked I set about rudimentary electrical fault finding. Everything checked out ok. PSU was working correctly. No flashing red led on the driver, no alarm output on its electrical interface, I could see the resistance of the motor windings, I had the same voltage across each winding. Turned (!) out the drive pulley on my hybrid servo stepper motor was slipping! Next time I'll try starting with the obvious. Probably had locked the cross table and fortunately I had accidentally built in a slipping clutch ..... Very relieved BobUK.

Using this kit for an electronic universal conversion kit for my semi-universal dividing head on the mill. Pretty cool design and it has so many uses for more than just the intended ELS.

Did I miss the electric magnetic half nut lock so imperial and metric screws can be cut by engaging and disengaging lead screw?

Happy to say that all of my issues were caused by lifting a pad on the display board (only one pad is connected on one side, supplies power to the driver chip, so of course I broke the trace!) I got a couple of boards (which are slightly different, as James notes) and plugged one in before I replaced the connector, and **bingo**. I must have played with it for an hour on the bench. As I have different servo / driver setup, I need to figure out the settings to get the best results.
Now to order up some timing belts and pulleys. Think I'm gonna test TI's claim that this will run two axes as well, so I can have an ETA (Electronic Taper Attachment.) Still learning about the LaunchPad board ... it ain't no Arduino.

alot overkill for this prodject, but as an electronic engeeneer, micro proggramer and hobbyst machining:I LOVE IT :) YOU DID A WONDERFULL JOB. hank you. i will use it on my lathe

Hi James. Great job with the ELS project! Have you thought about integrating it with your VFD so you can control the spindle speed from the same control panel?

I've also had good results on RPM in micros by using successive approximation for an average.

Just bought a similar lathe and am building this amazing lathe project with you now, just bought the parts on eBay. My lathe has a DRO for the spindle speed with an encoder in the system somewhere.

what would be the things I would have to figure out and look for to connect the existing hardware to this process?

James, in one of your episodes 1 - 20, you have promised that touch screen for this project is coming, do you still have it in your mind?

Hi James, your content is great, keep up with the instructional detail, you're a great teacher. I too use you tube as a learning environment and completely applaud your "pay the good back" attitude. I'm a few years behind you in my skills development, but oh so inspired by you, Quinn at Blondihacks, This Old Tony and many others. I'm warming up a long dormant project as a direct result of your ELS series, and I'l be ordering a kit for my lathe

Hi James, So question. can the lead screw be run without the lathe running ? To be specific I was given a lathe/mill combo that is missing all the change gears, so a ELS seems a better choice rather that purchasing the missing gears. At the same time with this unit you would have to remove the chuck and run the lathe motor at the same time as the mill motor in order to have auto feed as the bed is attached to the lead screw.

Hi James (or anyone else who can help), I’ve got everything together and set up on a bench to test, I’m fairly sure it’s wired up correctly, however, the servo motor will only turn in one direction, regardless of the rotation direction of the encoder and also regardless of the direction setting on the control box, what am I missing or doing wrong? Is it likely a wiring issue or is it a setting in the software?

i have no leadscrew at all in my lathe, and i wanted to add a ballscrew to the lathe, which will be driven by the servo motor. So i need a way to power down the stepper motor while the machine turns, is it possible to reenable the power button while the machine turns, or should i just have a big button of disenablement on my machine disenabling the stepper driver. As some kind of a "virtual halfnut".

This was the feature I was waiting for before buying (I ordered mine and got it 2 weeks ago!). My lathe doesn't have half nuts, and the leadscrew is connected to a handle, so I can engage the gears on one end, or I can run the handle on the other end (the right hand side) and that's how the carriage moves manually. I needed the power button to disable it when I'm the one driving. ;)

Greetings Folks!

Can help anybody wiring this components together without esl pcb board? I have launchxl-f280049c, logic level shitfter, led&key board. I find just the esl pcb board wiring diagramm. I want just a testpad run. Thank you!

Slowing the speed makes total sense for reliability's sake as you explained it, as we would not even notice the difference. Some of us are even slower so it would make less of a difference, lol.

your explainations and attention to detail are a credit to you. i am awaiting bits to arrive and looking forward to the challenge? ( a mostly mechanical guy)

Those continuity charts sure came in handy for me! Thanks

1001 James...

After contacting you many times I am still not able to get my program to run properly on the launch pad. I have followed your instructions to the T and triple checked everything. Something I would like know is other than the 3 switches that required changing on the launchpad is what position should the other switches be in. I switched the can switch towards CAN and the clough42 came up on my display but nothing else functioned. I could see one of the lights flickering as if the program was running so I would like to be certain of all switch positions.

James, I'm building the ELS and waiting for some parts, but I have a my first question. I have watched all the videos several times, and one thing that is mentioned more than once is the length of the wire for the control panel. You have mentioned not to make the wire too long, what would you consider to be the maximum safe length please??

Have you considered a differential transceiver chip for I2C? Such as NXP’s PCA9615?

Hi, I bought a new lathe with the power feed bar + lead-screw. Now this video Part 20 is also more important. My question is how to set-up in configuration.H the ratio. My spindle need to spin 13 time to make spin 1 time the shaft of my gear box. The ratio is 1:0,0075= viceversa from shaft 13:1. Now assuming that what How I should set this data in configuration.H?

When I worked as a safety officer I was employed by a company that did all the new construction wiring for all data and communication so internet fax and telephone I was told the foil wrapped wire was for added stability in signal in the large cabinets where some buildings had 2 or 3 28"×28" × 6' tall cabinets with only 1 fiber optics line in and hundreds out to every phone dsl wall outlet

James I'm really actracted from your nice ELS project but at moment, in Italy, is not to easy to buy the Texas instruments product...have you any suggestion for an appropriate substitute using your kit? Thanks a lot processing my question...and what You think for using a 5 inch touch screen as someone did?

so what all do I need to buy to make it so I can cut threads with the lead screw as far as the boards well everything except for the motor

I noticed that the LAUNCHXL-F280049C has 2 encoder inputs. Could the second encoder be used to read a cross slide linear encoder and work the VFD to set, and maintain, speed? Possibly speeding up the spindle as you make facing cuts?
It would probably require a different interface in order to set a material (and cutter) specific cutting speed as well as the ELS feed rate. And setting the diameter that the cutter is at, etc.

I know this is fairly old by now, but there are sync/source level shifting IC's for this very purpose and they are actually fairly inexpensive, they reduce the issue by having an extra transistor to drive the line high rather than using a resistor to pull it up.

Hi James, I cannot configure Separate step and microstep settings for feed rates. When I do, I get this error: gmake: Target 'all' not remade because of errors. What am I missing here? .....I'm sure it's something very simple and stupid :)

Nice video. Sort of a Spaceballs reference at the end?

So looking into implementing this. I have a bunch of MDrive23 motors which I would like to use. Trying to find the USB cable to program these.

James, is there a complete parts list for your ELS? I want to make sure I have everything.
Also, it might make a good video to summarize everything. Like the various parts and how it all goes together. All this is probably in your videos already, but it’s hard to pull it all out.
Like, does the rotating sensor that links to the spindle need to be a 1:1 ratio, or can that be changed in the software (one of your variables like the tpi of the lead screw)?
I think I have most of the parts but don’t know if I need a DC power supply. Lots of little things like that.
I know you’re busy as hell and I love your videos, but a summary ELS video would be great.
Thanks,
Paul

I'm not a smart guy, but you seem like a genius to me - for what that's worth. (Ha Ha) Keep up the great work! :)

Such a very well done project/video! Thanks again James.

Excellent as always

is there a lower limit to the TPI that this ELS can handle? Could it cut a 1 TPI or .5 TPI?

my lath as a shaft to drive both feed & threading. it cut's threads with it's gears train & Banjo By driving the shaft by means of a 6 thread to the " nut being driven with a gear running in the trads turning a shaft to the rack thirds are cut. i was growing to put a mobility scooter motor to drive the shaft & set it up a bit like, the feed. on the MiG welder 7 cut third by working out the speed to a thread at a desired pitch. I her you say why bother is all done with cloug42 . alas its done for them that can get the necessary brown lodes for the powering of it mother board the red long card in your system that. hols the coding . i have a windows 10 powers computer but although i have tris to follow your instruction & have found the page i have been unable to down lowd it to a folder on my computer files for use when i have the perches. that prevent me from moving on unless you can provide the board with code Enabled redy to plug a go. is that possible. I have ask several time's if i can ues a mobility scooter Or an industrial MiG motor to replays the stepper motor as a work around ? exsplan why not . les England.

i wuld love to see a video on pitch to speeds reshows which is the hart of the else siystom when i first set up my lath to cut a thread . with out it gears i discovered it gear dox control pitch by accident it mattered not the speed of the chuck & the for the Pinedale. fast or slow it sated in sink with the banjo. remove the banjo & Mach the shaft speed & your thread pitch matches the thread pitch gage. but it dose not do so if their is not a gear box the pitch is driven by the led screw in this case the lack of gear box is control by the court on the spindle shaft , signals is the a way of incising or decreasing a rand of speed's to select terd count with out a encoder on the chuck spindle removing the need for coding.

I started tracking the build of your electronic lead screw quite by accident. In my work life I've spend a lot of hours on a ...dynamic continuous motion lead/ball screw "checker", screw mapper, to verify tolerances of rolled screws. You caught my attention as you defined the power capabilities of the Launch Pad, at one point you were referring to the systems control loop & I/O latencies, "Math Co-processor(never thought I'd see these things again), and just..all the amazing things built into this board...and the price..I don't even want to know how they make them that cheap.  

Inadvertantly you provided to me both an economical and (probably🤣) "accessible enough to me" system that is not a toy and is (if you are smarter enough than me) up to task of ..Ultra Low-Latency control loops that might even need a little math. With the ground work I've gleened from watching your videos about something I have no intensions of building. I've learned a great number of very useful bits filling some gaps that I needed to close to solve a puzzle. I have to figure there are communities with smarter enough than me people sharing thier launch pad project to get the pieces I just don't have the bandwidth to learn to do myself.

Anywho.. 𝒯𝒽𝒶𝓃𝓀 𝒴o𝓊!  

(PS, I Think you'd make an excellent guide to learning how to make good and interesting use of those launchpads/programming controls or machines with them. Tips and tricks Maybe?🤷‍♂ 😝

Hi James
I have tried to buy from the eBay source you link to - but they do NOT ship to EU - so a bit of a bummer.
I will admit that I have made many PCB's for production - so another layout is not out of the question ...!
But it would be easier getting it assembled ;-)

Speaking of trouble shooting, Here's a question for anybody doing the ELS...I had my ELS all setup and running in the enclosure (not set up on the lathe yet). The next time I turned it on, only the power light in the control panel lit up. I put the PCB back on the computer and ran CCS software. I'm getting an error that says to RESET the LaunchXL board. I pushed the RESET button on the board, but that does not seem to do anything. Any advice on resetting the board? Thanks!