New install help

I am looking into using emc to control a large industrial drilling machine (8' x 20') that is currently using a galil dmc 1040 ISA card with dos and a qbasic cnc program. The machine has servo motors with encoders and scales on the X, Y, W axis's. It is driven with a rack and pinion system, and the X axis has 2 motors (X and W) so also having 2 scales / 2 encoders.

I am thinking of using a mesa 5i20 card with the 7i65 8 axis servo card since I need to read 7 encoder signals and control 4 servo motors and an analog signal spindle motor. The system also needs outputs for hydralic motion clamps and a manual tool change control that is air driven.

Am I headed in the right direction with that choice of pci cards and using emc for software, or is it to much for emc to do on a industrial production machine that runs ~20 hours a day?

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

Dave,

Oh, and one other thing to add.

I have the source code for the dos software and it is using the linear encoders for the P and I variables and the motor encoders for the D variables in the PID loop.

Dave.

Emc is capable of running production machines:

Here is some basic info about using two feedback sources for one motor:
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?Com..._Devices_On_One_Axis

Are you saying that both X and W use two motors each?
I dont think the mesa 7i65 is supported by EMC yet.
The 7i33 quad analog servo board is supported.

No, the X and W use 2 encoders each but only one motor each. So there is a total of 7 encoders and 4 servos and 1 spindle motor.
I would need to output 5 analog servo signals (+-10volt) and read all 7 encoders, so thats why I wanted to go with the 7i65. I figured that the 7i65 would work with hostmot2, but its not supported? Should I use the 6 axis card and another encoder card then?

Dave.

I think that only the:
7i33 quad servo card
7i37 isolation card
7i42 breakout card
are supported at this time in EMC2

so you would need to use two quad cards.

so with the firmware for the 5i20 in the EMC integrator manual on page 150 the SV12 lists 12 encoders and 12 PWM
the SVST8_4IM2 lists 8 encoders, 8 PWM, 4 stepgen, and 8 GPIO

Would you have to use 2 or even 3 of the quad servo boards for these configs? I am a little confused.

you can use the
svst8_4im2 with 2 quad cards
sv12 with up to 3 quad cards
svst8_4 with up to 2 quad cards

the rest of the firmware for the 5i20 is not compatible wit the quad card.
look at the pattern of the pins on one connector of say the sv12 firmware.
that pattern of pins is what the quad card needs.
on the sv12 all the connectors have the same pattern so all three connectors could use the quad card