Looking into motion control/breakout boards and after recommendations

Hi everyone,

I have built a cnc machine and am running it on 2 x parallel ports, but i'm almost out of I/O's and looking at tidying everything up nicer.

So I have been looking into new motion control/breakout boards, i have come across MESA and like the look of it, but i'm just after peoples opinions on what to go with.
The options are 7I76e / 5I25+7I76 / 6I25+7I76, so i'm just wondering what people would recommend from these 3 options and why.

Or if anyone has any other options over MESA that are cost effective and could point me in the directions of these that would be great.

Thanks for any help.

Will

Hi Willy. I see this has been hanging here for a while. I have a 5i25 / 7i76 on an Emco and a 7i76e on a Takisawa. I don't have any problems with either one of them. The 7i76e is just easier for me as there is only the network cable and power supply. My computer is in the front panel and 7i76e in the rear panel with the drives and PS's.

So, 7i76e is my preferance, but both will work.

Sent from my BV6800Pro using Tapatalk

Can anyone suggest a motion control/breakout board that works equally well with LinuxCNC and Mach 3/4?

wally0623

There are none.
LinuxCNC and Mach3/4 are fundamentally different programs, and the hardware that works them them is very different.

It depends. the 5i25 is a PCI card. The 6i25 is a PCIe card. Both take two daughter cards including the 7i76. So the one to choose depends on your PC hardware

The 7i76e basically rolls the 6i25 and the 7i76 into one single ethernet card. 5 stepgens, 32 inputs, 16 outputs, analog inputs, 2 MPG inputs, spindle control.

Once installed, there is no difference in performance between PCIe and ethernet.

I prefer the ethernet cards but if I was building a machine that had an integrated console, I might go the PCIe path. However when you can get tiny PC's like the Odroid h2+ or even a raspberry pi4 running linuxcnc, why bother with anything other than ethernet?

So an ethernet based card with work with both LinuxCNC and Mach 3/4, despite what has been previously stated?

wally0623

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Originally Posted by wally0623

So an ethernet based card with work with both LinuxCNC and Mach 3/4, despite what has been previously stated?

wally0623

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Different Ethernet cards will work with LinuxCNC and Mach but I am not aware of any single card that will work with both.

...is it better to think from the top down...or from the bottom up when building a cnc? ...are the real questions...besides costs

Hi MH5 - Do you man the structure? ie the bottom is the machine base and the top is the Z axis? Peter