Gilson Cyberlab C400

HACK THE GILSON

See the "driver and codebase" section for the quickstart!

Gantry Controls

The gantry motors are driven by a pair of BMC 6C Brushless PWM Servo Amplifiers.

They appear to be in variable torque mode by default. The controllers want a differential +/- 0-15v analog control input. There appears to be some sort of safety mechanism in the main chassis that controls the voltage fed back to the power supply's main contactor, presumably cutting off voltage to the motor controllers in the event that an error condition is tripped. This can be bypassed by holding the contactor down with a screwdriver.

ACHTUNG: There is no built-in hardware control loop. Use caution when controlling servo amplifiers directly.

Pinouts for the COMPUTER din connector on the front of the servo control supply:

Pin	Function
6	X Encoder B
7	X Encoder A
8	X Encoder B Not
9	Y Encoder B
10	Y Encoder A
13	X Encoder A Not
14	VCC +5
15	VCC +5
16	GND
17	GND
18	Y Encoder B Not
19	Y Encoder A Not
20	X Stop 3
21	GND
22	X Stop 4
23	GND
24	X Servo -
25	X Servo +
26	Y Stop 3
27	GND
28	Y Stop 4
29	GND
30	Y Servo -
31	Y Servo +
32	X Stop 2
33	Y Stop 2
34	X Stop 1

End Stops

There are four opto-interrupts per axis, three on one side and one on the opposite site. Of the three on the "home" side, the first interrupt (towards the middle of the machine) is One, the middle (Two) is the absolute home position, and the furthest interrupt (all the way to the outside of the machine) is Three. The interrupt on the far side is Four. Note: The number Three and Four stops are NOT absolute home, but rather safety stops that will automatically disengage the main relay if tripped. The machine should be homed to stop number Two. These numberings apply to both axis. Zero on the X axis is on the left side of the machine; zero on the Y axis is towards the rear. Interrupts are normally high (+5V) and go to zero when interrupted. Y Stop One is not listed on the pinout because I forgot which pin it is, but it is on the breakout board.

Breakout Board

At the end of the grey data cable, I wired up a small breakout board with the important pins. With the wires facing you (and the headers away from you), the pins are, from left to right: X+, X-, A, B, 1, 2, 3, 4 | Y+, Y-, A, B, 1, 2, 3, 4 | Gnd VCC

Manuals / Data Sheets

From Gilson - "I have attached a User’s Guide for the 925, 940 Workstations. The C-400 became the 940 Workstation. I also found a C-400 User’s guide. I hope that one of these will answer your questions. It looks like this information is from the early 2000’s"

C-400 Users Guide
940 Users Guide
Motor Encoders

Our driver and codebase

We are currently driving the machine off a Futurelec STM32 development board. Nick has ported the maple bootloader to the board.

The codebase for the Gilson is in NYCR's github: git://github.com/nycresistor/libmaple.git