Best Mesa Cards/ Combo for DELTA ASD-A2 drive/motor

Bandar wrote: Thanks Tommy for the reply. So, you are using the 7i92M in order to avoid using the 5i25 or 6i25 PCI board. This way you don't have to use a PC, you just use a laptop with linuxcnc software in it. (I like this idea).

I am not avoiding those at all, currently i have 1x 5i25 and 2x 6i25, but i tend to use them for retrofits of industrial machines and put the PC with everything else in the cabinet.
I was not aware of such differences between 7i77 and 7i97, thank you Aciera.
In that case a single 7i84 would get you 32 inputs and 16 outputs, and wiring it to the 7i97 is very easy as explained in the user manual (page 10 for 7i77)

I personally wouldn't use a 7i77 or 7i97 (analog -10V to 10V) for the Delta A2 servo drive. Those modern servo drives support step/dir input (in addition to analog).

A 7i76e + 7i85 or a 7i95 + a SmartSerial Card for extra inputs / outputs is probably a better choice. That way you could start using them in open-loop and later on add linear scales for full closed-loop system.

An analog card like the 7i77 or 7i97 requires linear scales right from the start.

Edit Post:
Forgot that the servo drive has an encoder, so no need for linear scales - just encoder feedback.

There are many Mesa cards and it's not quite easy to figure which one is the one but I get that each board can work with any machine, I just need to figure out what I actually need.

0x2102 Can you confirm this? Or anyone...
0x2102 An analog card like the 7i77 or 7i97 requires linear scales right from the start.

If the 7i77/or 7i97 require a linear scale from the start, that is not good. Because I want to add these linear scale later when I see movement and actually cut some aluminium.

Regards

0x2102 wrote: An analog card like the 7i77 or 7i97 requires linear scales right from the start.

That is correct, none of those work without encoder feedback.

Should be clarified here, you don't need linear scales, you just need the encoder on the motor.

(im doing the same with my machine)

- analogue drive mode NEEDS the motor encoder back to the control
- step and direction does NOT need the encoder to go to the control, although you can add it optionally
- BOTH setups can have linear scales added to them optionally.

My personal experience (with one set of old drives) has been that linuxcnc analogue velocity control is not super easy to deal with, so ill be using step and direction mode via a 7i76 with my encoders fed to the control optionally via a 7i77 (I just happen to already have both on hand).

What this does is let the delta drive's very advanced tuning and filtering deal with the hard stuff, and linuxcnc can read the encoder just for error checking.

There are other ways to set this up as well, using step and direction as velocity control, letting linuxcnc close the loop itself. I will experiment with that but I don't expect to use it.

ihavenofish wrote: .... that linuxcnc analogue velocity control is not super easy to deal with,.....

That is very true in the beginning it seems really hard and complicated, but once you get the hang of it it can be done in 5 to 20 minutes.