AC servo motor drives compatibility

The photos don't help me much. If the drives take +-10v analog input and has encoder output is is pretty simple. Other control methods are possible. Do you have the manual for the drive? Do you have encoders on the axes?

JT

I see the word "Resolver" in the fault LED key, and I see "Encoder Out" on the terminal blocks.
So, the drive takes resolver feedback from the motor for commutation and position feedback, and then outputs encoder pulses for use by the controller.

It isn't obvious from the pictures what the control mode of the drives is, but I would be very surprised if they are anything other than +/-10V velocity-mode drives, and if so they should be very easy indeed to control with LinuxCNC. You will, however, need some add-on hardware, you can't really do +/-10V servo control with just a parallel port.

PanagiotisZ wrote:

What kind of hardware shall I look for?

There is a large list of supported hardware here:
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?LinuxCNC_Supported_Hardware
Though even that is not a complete list.

People generally use one of the following three systems:
www.pico-systems.com/PPMC.html
store.mesanet.com/index.php?route=produc...83_84&product_id=214 (see the individual cards for more details)
www.generalmechatronics.com/en/linuxcnc

PanagiotisZ wrote:

So, could it be possible to control the drive via the serial port with linuxcnc?

Maybe not with the computer serial port, but it should be possible in principle.

There are already servo drives compatible with LinuxCNC that use various serial protocols (EtherCAT. CAN and the Mesa Smart-serial, as examples).

Real-time serial with the Mesa-card UART modules is certainly possible, but you would need a dedicated driver. (don't be too discouraged by that, writing real-time drivers for LinuxCNC is often surprisingly easy).

I confess that I have never tried to use rtapu_inb() and rtapi_outb() with a serial port. It might "just work."
linuxcnc.org/docs/2.7/html/man/man3/rtapi_outb.3rtapi.html

If you don't want a programming project than buy existing hardware that uses +/-10V control. Because it is all closed-loop any inherent inaccuracy in the drive signal is irrelevant.