[Galane]

I picked up the following for $464.95 on eBay.

Contents:
- Qty 5 - P/N PB4A002P300 SanMotion Closed Loop Stepper Motor Driver (4 working and 1 of unknown condition)
- Qty 4 Closed loop stepper motor part number PBM862FXK20-M with martin 18XL020 pulleys mounted on output shaft
- encoder cables and motor cables approx 33 feet long (I only measured one of the four, but I believe they are all the same length)
- qty 4 line filters

They're step/direction (which Sanyo-Denki calls "pulse train".) drives with matching motors that have a 6 NM peak torque rating. The encoders are 4000 P/R so fine and accurate control should be possible.

Now I need something to go between the drives and the PC I'll be using. I'm leaning towards using LinuxCNC with a Mesa 5I25 and 7I76 combo (would like to use the 7I76E but no Ethernet support in LinuxCNC yet).

Keeping in mind the price of the Mesa hardware ($199 for either the two boards or the one with Ethernet) what else is available? I like the specs of the 7I76, it should have all the connections needed for limit switches, e-stop, lube pump control, spindle on/off/dir etc.

If there's something better, perhaps for a bit more money, especially if it has tricks up its sleeve like being able to take input from rotary encoders and linear scales simultaneously, I'd like to know about it.

Why yes, I *am* cheap when it comes to this stuff. I'm not in a tearing hurry to get this retrofit done, thus I have the 'luxury' of being able to wait for [s]st[/s]deals like what I got on these drives and motors to come along.

[samco]

The support is coming but will probably be a month or more. I have a 7i80 (it is like the pci 5i20 but Ethernet..) There are some things that need to be done before it is supported. (xenomai realtime integration and some driver optimization..) (But I have twiddled a gpio bit over the network!)

Exciting...

sam

[Galane]

What CNC software does support the Ethernet connection right now?

[PCW_MESA]

You can easily add more encoder inputs to a 5I25/6I25 + 7I76 setup by adding
a encoder input daughter-card, or you can start with a different set of daughter-cards,
say a 7I85S and a 7I84 instead of the 7I76. This combination gives you roughly
the same field I/O as a 7I76, but has 4 step/dir outputs and 4 encoder inputs