1 - 18 Machine Components 704-0212-209 VM Series Maintenance and Safety Manual
Card Rack Electronics
The Mini-ITX control is an embedded CNC and Slice I/O device used with the RMB to
distribute power to the machine and console and to control machine operation. There is
also a quick change SATA drive caddy.
In the upright position, installed in the electrical cabinet, the access panel is on the right-
hand side of the case. Remove the 10 screws to open the case. Holes are available for
screwdriver access to the PCI and PCIe cards inside the case.
Processor
The Mini-ITX CNC contains a COM Express CPU with a 2 GHz Core 2 duo processor and 2
GB DDR2 667 Mhz maximum system memory.
Digital Watchdog
The Mini-ITX digital watchdog is located on the card rack carrier board. The watchdog
monitors the refresh or “heartbeat” of the host processor. The watchdog disables control
power in the event the heartbeat should stop. If this occurs, the Main Slice I/O ES
System Status LED illuminates to indicate an Embedded E-Stop: Host Watchdog Timeout
condition.
PCIe Video Board
The PCIe video board is located on the front of the Mini-ITX card rack, next to the Motion
board. The video card is a PCI Express x16 High Performance, Dual VGA. The PCIe board
rests on a retainer inside the card rack. Access to the board is allowed through a
screwdriver hole in the bottom of the card rack.
PCI Motion Board
The PCI motion board is located on the front of the Mini-ITX card rack, next to the Video
board. Milling machines use the ZMP PCI motion board. The PCI board rests on a retainer
inside the card rack.Access to the board is allowed through a screwdriver hole in the
bottom of the card rack.
The motion control subsystem consists of two major component types: the ZMP motion
processor and one or more Remote Motion Blocks (RMB). Each component is connected
in a token ring network topology using shielded CAT5e cables terminated with RJ45
connectors (a.k.a. the SynqNet bus). The network complies with the 100Base-T physical
standard, but uses a deterministic full-duplex protocol called SynqNet to communicate
between the controller and its nodes. SynqNet is an open standard developed by Motion
Engineering, Inc.
The ZMP motion processor is a PCI card with an intelligent DSP controller that accepts
position/velocity/time commands from the CNC host computer, and sends velocity
commands digitally via the SynqNet bus. The RMB then converts the digital velocity
command to an analog voltage compatible with the servo drive velocity input.
Conversely, the incremental position data from the axis encoders is decoded by the RMB,
and transmitted as an absolute position to the SynqNet bus. The ZMP receives the
position feedback and passes it to the host computer via PCI bus. The ZMP uses the same
position feedback in its fine interpolation algorithm to determine its velocity command.
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