Choices for Controller/Breakout Boards

Project_Hopeless
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7 years 8 months ago #125781 by Project_Hopeless

Choices for Controller/Breakout Boards was created by Project_Hopeless

What types of controller boards does LinuxCNC work with? If it works with Mach3/4 will it work with LinuxCNC?

I plan on running LinuxCNC on a PC and I have parallel and USB ports available.

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tommylight
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7 years 8 months ago #125806 by tommylight

Replied by tommylight on topic Choices for Controller/Breakout Boards

Parallel port works properly.
USB will never work for actual machine control due to inherent latency problems.
There are also plenty of Mesa cards to choose from that work perfectly with Linuxcnc, and we use them to control industrial machines, but at a extremely low price for what they are capable of.

www.youtube.com/@toma.cnc1
www.youtube.com/@toma.3d
www.youtube.com/@tomapc

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Leon82
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7 years 8 months ago - 7 years 8 months ago #125808 by Leon82

Replied by Leon82 on topic Choices for Controller/Breakout Boards

If you want it cheap I'm using a 20dollar breakout board. It uses parallel port.

You can turn on a spindle, have estop and 3 inputs for limit switches. And 5 axes.

On messa electronic website click on Linux CNC compatible cards. There is an Ethernet version 7i76e I think. It has many many features

Last edit: 7 years 8 months ago by Leon82.

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tommylight
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7 years 8 months ago #125861 by tommylight

Replied by tommylight on topic Choices for Controller/Breakout Boards

Or 7i96, much cheaper and plenty of features.

www.youtube.com/@toma.cnc1
www.youtube.com/@toma.3d
www.youtube.com/@tomapc

The following user(s) said Thank You: Leon82

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Project_Hopeless
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7 years 8 months ago #125963 by Project_Hopeless

Replied by Project_Hopeless on topic Choices for Controller/Breakout Boards

I noticed the 7i96, I'm leaning that way because of the extra I/O feature set. And I'd have one less thing to upgrade when the time comes.

But it is Ethernet. Will there be any latency issues? Anything special need to happen on the PC side to the NIC?

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Leon82
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7 years 8 months ago - 7 years 8 months ago #125968 by Leon82

Replied by Leon82 on topic Choices for Controller/Breakout Boards

I believe it takes the latency issues out of the equation. But I could be wrong.

In mach 3 they use them(smooth stepper) a lot because I think windows can be a turd sometimes

Last edit: 7 years 8 months ago by Leon82.

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PCW
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7 years 8 months ago #125974 by PCW

Replied by PCW on topic Choices for Controller/Breakout Boards

LinuxCNC stll requires real time access to motion hardware but using
external hardware for high speed tasks like step generation and
encoder counting relaxes this requirement considerably compared
to parallel port configurations.

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Project_Hopeless
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7 years 8 months ago #126024 by Project_Hopeless

Replied by Project_Hopeless on topic Choices for Controller/Breakout Boards

PCW wrote: LinuxCNC stll requires real time access to motion hardware but using
external hardware for high speed tasks like step generation and
encoder counting relaxes this requirement considerably compared
to parallel port configurations.

Is that what the 7i96 board does?

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PCW
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7 years 8 months ago #126026 by PCW

Replied by PCW on topic Choices for Controller/Breakout Boards

Yes, that's what the 7I96 does

For example step generation is done by a "digital frequency generator"
so that instead of linuxCNC generating every step, LinuxCNC just sends
a new step _rate_ command every 1 ms, and reads the accumulated
step count (and fractional step count) for feedback

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Leon82
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7 years 8 months ago #126791 by Leon82

Replied by Leon82 on topic Choices for Controller/Breakout Boards

tommylight wrote: Or 7i96, much cheaper and plenty of features.

I just saw that one. I assumed that the e version was the only one.

They also have one that has a parallel port connector on it so you can use your existing breakout board if you want to upgrade to an Ethernet

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