electronic lead screw

Took roughly an hr to sell out, but in the video he said he'd make more.
 
My encoder showed up today just waiting for 3 more pulleys. Haven’t been this excited for a build in a long time.


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I am deep into the process of putting a Clough42 ELS on my 1949 Myford ML7.

I am also looking for any help/guidance/juju that will make this thing work, else I will send it to the scrapheap in the sky and buy a Rocketronics outfit.

I am following exactly the process laid out by Clough42. I have a TI F280049C with a Clough42 booster board. I have an Omron E6B2-CWZ6C encoder and the hybrid servo motor specified by Clough42.

In putting this all together I treble checked continuity and crosstalk. I admit to being a klutz regarding soldering but all the connections are fine and work properly. I did manage to blow 2 of the Display boards (not connected to anything at the time) when I tried to desolder the 5-pin connector. I ended up with one of Clough42 display kits which look really nice -- if they worked.

Regarding the display, I found that I could solder the leads to the board as delivered, then bend the pins, suitably insulate everything and fit the whole thing into a slightly bigger box. No desoldering !!

The display lights up -- the opener with the Clough42 logo, then the ELS 1.1.02 version, then the left hand side shows 0, the right hand side works fine allowing me to set threads etc. The problem comes when I plug in the leads from the encoder into J12, the display dies just showing a live power LED. When connected, the 3.3v LED on the booster board turns off but the 5v remains lit.

OK says I, I must have screwed something up and blown a board. So I sequentially replaced the booster board and the encoder. No Go. Nothing changed so I bought a new TI board.

This sucker would not even boot no matter what I did. I tried CCS v9.0.1, v9.1.0, v10.1, v8.something -- nothing, and in between times I struggled with our friend Microsoft which released a new version of Win10, so I have gone through the issues of unsigned drivers. That is now behind me with signed drivers on Win10 v1903, but still the new board refuses to connect saying it cannot find XDS110.

Board settings are as I think Clough42 is now specifying -- S3 both at zero, S4 at 1, S9 at 1.

Does anybody have any ideas?

I think the whole concept is a great idea and will bring life to many old hunks of rusting lathes. Think about it, when you go looking for old lathes you often find the only things missing are the change gears, which are virtually impossible to replace. This project, if it worked, would fix that.

I should say that I am not *****ing about Clough42 as I think his videos are the very best on the web and he clearly makes an effort to do them well. In particular the sound management is very good and he enunciates his words well.

Does anybody have any ideas.

Thanks, Ian
 
Welcome to the forum. I just enough about the system to get into trouble but I'll give it a go. I built my ELS in January and am running version 1.0.03 of the firmware. Offhand, if you got the display to light up and display the Clough42 and version and you can run through the various threads and feeds, you were successful in flashing the Launchpad. When you plug the encoder in and the display goes dark, it sounds like a short or wirng configuration. It is also really easy to reverse the encoder plug. If you remove the encoder and reboot the Launchpad and it comes up as before,chances are no damage was done. If the display is now dark then it is likely that some damage was done.

I don't have the boards in front of me but as I remember, the booster board supplies the voltage for the Launchpad, the display, and the encoder. I wold begin by removing the booster board from the Launchpad and powering it up. You should get the 5 v. and 3.5 v. led's to light. I wold also check the actual voltage. As I recall, you can access those voltages from just behind the power socket.

To go much deeper, I will have to dig into the circuitry as seven months is a long time ago for an old codger like me. There are others on this forum who are much more knowledgeable than me and I'm sure we can get you some help.
 
Ian, if you look through the previous posts on this thread, you will be able to identify those member who are more knowledgeable. If you click on their handle to the left, it will open a new window where you can send them a private message. You will find that members of this forum are generally willing to help others.
Good luck
 
Agree with RJSakowski, you had it working. As he said, you're at least shorting the encoder inputs, or more likely shorting its power to ground. Agree that you need to power it all up again without the encoder to get yourself back to Square 1. If that means going back to the previous HW that you know works, do that. Then, very carefully check out the wiring to the encoder, as it's highly likely that you've miswired one or both ends of the cable/connector. If that doesn't turn up anything, put a volt meter on the voltage that powers the encoder before you plug it in, and see what it does when it is plugged in. My bet is that the voltage will go to zero, and that means that the cable is miswired, or that the encoder is defective (unlikely but remotely possible).
 
Yeah, seems straight forward. If you had it working then plugged the encoder in and it all went south, back up. Unplug the encoder, if everything working again? If yes, oh thank you sweet Jesus! You have the wiring wrong for encoder. I can easily pull mine and give you that as a double check.
If, when the encoder is unplugged, it's still a no go, you gotta figure out what's blown. I'd start with the booster board. It's cheaper/easier and deal with the voltage needs (which if you mis-wired the Encoder...I'd GUESS the culprit.
 
RJS, kb58, Guns,

Many thanks for responding and of course you are all correct.

I definitely had triple checked the continuity and lack of crosstalk in the encoder cable, but like an idiot I had plugged the power pins in the wrong way round!

The situation now is that the Control Panel lights up and reads zero for RPM, and the various settings for the right hand side of the panel all seem to be selectable. Firing up the lathe to rotate the encoder produces no change in the panel -- still zero.

Likewise there is no reaction at the stepper motor, but that is progress.

I should add that this is with Encoder #2, Booster Board #2, and TI Board #2 which I eventually got to boot and flash v1.1.02. I have been doing my best to support the US economy.

Thanks for your input and I am now going to rest for a while to figure out the next steps.

Ian
 
Probably blew up the encoder. Reversing polarity is worse than shorting the supply voltage to ground, because the power actively tries to feed through the device in the reverse direction, often succeeding.
 
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Oh man Ian, I wish I could offer some better direction. (I looked online for a simple encoder test (to check if yours is bad) most I came across require an oscilloscope, I'm assuming you don't have. I't really SEEMS that your launch board is good, you led screen works so I assume it and the boost board are good. You have attached the encoder correctly? (its printed on the encoder and the launch board says next to each pin) Unless you have he stepper connected, I'm not sure you'll have any feedback to know if its worked (maybe RPS?) So next round of questions, are you sure the stepper is connect to power supply correctly? Also, there are a few connection for the stepper, the jumpers and the wires are a bit confusing..obviously the serial cable isn't an issue. You setup the launch board by setting the switches (those ity-bity ones) correctly?
 
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