Mesa card performance

This is my first time on this forum and i have a few question that hopfully some one could help me with and jump start my Electronic build a Little .
First off im building a large gantry type router that will serve as a plasma cutter as well (outer size of frame is 2500mm*2200mm).

I have bought a new Kinco ac servo system ,two 1880watts and one 750watts servo with amplifiers.
now im looking at different mesa card combos,have reed on this forum and mesa home page what i could find on these cards
but still a Little confused wich one to chose.
kinco servo can handle both step\dir 500khz and analog torque\velocity modes with different update frequenzies.
wether im using analog or step\dir is a later question.

first question :can i expect any differens in servo performance if i chose the cheaper plug and go kit 5125\7177 instead of a 5120 combo or a Little more expensive one like the 5122.
is there any differens in the fpga cards speed\servo update time etc that i have to take in consideration?
the machine will be 5 axis in the future but for now 3 axis untill everything starts working.

2:fpga size 400k.800k.1MB is important for firmware size if im not misstaken,but how "big" fpga is needed for a 5 axis machine with maybe a simple toolchanger and Nothing else and maybe some one can give me an example of Machines that need a "big Fpga".

if some one could shed some light on these question a would deeply appreciated it,the World of Electronics and programming is not my strong side.

For a step/dir setup I would use a 5I25/6I25 + 7I76 card set,
for a analog servo setup I would use a 5i25/6i25+ 7i77 card set.

There is no real advantage of the older 5I20/5I22 FPGA cards systems for motion control


Unless you have more than 12 axis, or 400 I/O points, the FPGA on a 5I25 has plenty of space

So the number of axis and io points is the key differens between mesa fpga cards and of course different interface pci/pcie/usb/ethernet connections not "processing speed or servo update rates"????

Since i dont need alot of neither axis or io points a 5125/7177 or 7176 combo would be the right choise for me.

I have also recently purchased Kinco FD422 motor drives and ac servo's. Which drives did you purchase?

This FD422 supports pulse control mode (step/direction) , speed mode and torque mode ( speed & torque mode uses analog input)
The drive has its own PID tuning parameters and can output the motor encoder outputs to the host controller

Which method of control would be preferred step/direction or analog control?

I would guess Speed mode with the encoders sent back to the 7i77

The FD422 also has RS485/RS422 and supports Modbus RTU protocol How would this tie in with the Mesa 5i25/6i25 717x combination.

I would also like to have a extra encoder attached that i can use as a jogging wheel is this also possible with the mesa combinations?

The FD422 also has RS485/RS422 and supports Modbus RTU protocol How would this tie in with the Mesa 5i25/6i25 717x combination.

Modbus is not supported by Mesa I/O boards but can be done directly from the host processor with a USB --> RS-485 adapter
Note the Modbus is not real time so not suitable for multi-axis servo control. It is often used for spindle control

I would also like to have a extra encoder attached that i can use as a jogging wheel is this also possible with the mesa combinations?

Both the 7I76 and 7I77 have provisions to support 1 or 2 jogwheels (these steal 2 or 4 Field I/O inputs)

Hi im glad to se that im not the Only one to purches kinco servo .

i bought cd622 and cd422 servodrives with 750watt and two 1880WATT motors and if it works as i hope
i will get two more servos ,the plan is five axis in the future but for now will settle for 3axis until everything
is working.

Thanks PCW for the advice.

Hopefully this will be a simple wood router build so to start off I am going to use a solid state relay to drive a router for the spindle, have X, Y & Z home switches, one jog wheel and probably some X, Y & Z home command switches. I'm sure I'll need some inputs for emergency stop and other things.

A very quick read of the Kinco manual indicates i can have software travel limits setup in the motor drive and toggling an output when they are reached. I guess I could also do this function in Linux CNC as well.

Hi im glad to se that im not the Only one to purches kinco servo .

I actually got the drives cheaper than the CD422 and the main reason I got Kinco drive was the 220V +15% input supply limit as most of the other drives I looked at only had a 220V 10% input supply limit.