Re: Controller Advice Needed
With what I read, you are running steppers on a machine with a spindle.
In that case an ethernet Mesa 7i76e should be perfect for you.
What I don't think has been made clear is that Linuxcnc IS_THE_MOTION_CONTROLLER.
A real time OS is required to guarantee things happen on time. Fortunatley the PREEMPT_RT real time kernel is now available in the repositories for many distros
With Mach3, the Motion controller today is the ESS card or equivalent.
A full blown PC has far more CPU power than an embedded controller.
If you use a parallel port with Linuxcnc, the step generation is done on the PC in software which limits the maximum possible stepgen frequency.
What the Mesa cards do is offload the step generation to external hardware at frequencies up to 10 MHz. The motion controller just needs to tell the card what frequency to generate and it can change that 1000 times per second.
The offloaded step generation then substantially reduces the latency requirements so a greater range of PC's ca be used..
Linuxcnc is much more complex and extensible than its Widows competitors and a greater range of hardware is supported. Accordingly, some people find it more complex to configure.
I have recently helped someone to configure some Ethercat drives with Linuxcnc. To do this with Mach4, he tells me it was a USD $2800 spend. The Ethercat Master software is open source on Linux and can be integrated with Linuxcnc. Needless to say, I have some ethercat drives coming...
Rod Webster
www.vehiclemods.net.au