The Newker controller lives again!

Right. It's 90% wired up now. The motors are just freestanding on the bench and I haven't got all of the limit / home switches wired up. But it should function to a fair degree now.....

Couple of minor issues:

• The servos needed to be set up for position control in step / dir mode before they would both work here. Only one of them had been set up thus previously (by me). Then they both did the business. To do this, you connect up to the drive with the RS232 adaptor and use the tuning software to select the correct operation mode. I'll be needing to go back in there at some point to tune the PID parameters....
• I'd forgotten that I needed the MPG pendant connected up. As the controller is currently configured, the pendant enable button needs to be pressed for the system to move anything. Once I remembered that, it was all go. I'll have to figure out how to disable the pendant and revert to the control panel by default.
• Trying to run 3 Leadshine SMPS power supplies from a single 6A Type B MCB didn't work out so well. Even with a 10A Type B, it was tripping at turn-on. I've ordered a 10A Type C to cope with the turn-on inrush current. I could go with a 16A Type B but that doesn't seem like the sensible solution. With the 10A Type B, it usually trips on the first attempt but will succeed on the second. Clearly the DC bus caps are partially charged by then, reducing the inrush current below the trip level.

And here we are. Short video showing the 3 motors cutting virtual air. This was running one of the programs I'd loaded in the past, chosen randomly from those stored in the memory.

I have only one home switch fitted at present (on the Z axis). This seems to work as intended during the homing sequence. For the other 2 axes I couldn't be arsed to connect any switches up so instead I set ridiculous machine limits in the config, to keep them from interfering.