Saturday 3 April 2021

LiChuan configuration "software" - setup and use??

Setting up the servo tuning(?) software:
Having spent a couple of hours yesterday pratting about with the PID controllers for the X and Z axes, I seem to have arrived at something approximating to the best I can expect from my setup. It may not be stunningly good but it's a lot better than I'd ever achieve when using the machine in manual mode.

Ideally I'd have tuned the servo drives on their own before tuning the outer position loop within LinuxCNC. However, the "software" provided by Lichuan is almost unusable. For a start it won't even run on most of my Windows 10 machines. Finally, having installed it on 4 of them, I have a laptop that will both actually run it - and have it speaking English to me. Whoopeee shit. Another 2 hours of my life I will never get back, as they say.

Here's the link to download page where you download said "software", along with the "user manual". The "detailed" version of the manual is only available in Chinese but contains little more than the "simplified" version.

I then needed to download the driver for the USB-RS485 device before I could connect to the servo drive through a serial port (COM3) using a hacked ethernet cable:

Show time!
This revealed the "software" in all its glory. It's just a table of parameters that you download from the drive. You can change the values in the light blue column and then upload it back to the drive. That's it.




There are also a couple of pages for configuring the digital IO:


And showing the status of the ports etc.


Bottom line?
Pretty simple really. When it comes to PID settings, the only value I can change in the positional control mode is the direct gain (P), which is initially set to 20. There are no I or D term parameters. I suppose that keeps matters simple but means I'm stuck with what I've got. Bollocks.

1 comment:

  1. Hi,
    which USB/RS485 adapter do you use? I tried cheap 3$ adapter from aliexpress but doesn't work.
    Lichuan manual is very spare in context of modbus...

    ReplyDelete

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