Anyone seen this?

rodw wrote:

I think you use ethercat or you don't.
 

That's a fair assessment.

Whether you use Mesa or Ethercat is a matter for personal preference but if you are building a machine for resale customers will expect to see ethercat. The added cost may well be offset by reduced labour in the wiring. 

I do agree with what you're saying here, but the machine OEM/professional crowd can keep buying what they're buying. I don't build CNC machines for sale...not in the traditional sense. Then again I'm not so sure it looks all that professional when you open a cabinet and see a bunch of Chinesium....EtherCAT or not. I'm sure it's fine but I don't understand why they always use that font lol....there's something about that font that says "stay away"

In drive ethercat is definitely the way to go.

Servo drives: costs is $40-60 per drive for ethercat (vs pulse input variants) across multiple brands.
You then don't need a stepgen card. Decent stepgen card is $120-150.
So cost difference is minimal. Ethercat in drive gives you a lot more and is a lot easier than having a stepgen card.
For a new system, there would be no role for ethercat -> stepgen card -> servo/stepper.

But there is a case where converting an existing step/dir setup would be nice. I have a small lathe with a 750W step/dir servo for the spindle. It's good quality, not a cheap servo. The axis are cheap stepper driven. I'd like to change to ethercat servos for the axis. But then I am stuck with what to do for the spindle which is step/dir.

Ethercat module for suitable HMI would be good.

I'm not going to pay $1000 for one.

Need:
Encoder counter for MPG wheel - 100 PPR
Inputs for rotary encoders for feed override, rapid override, spindle override - ?20PPR ?general GPIO input fast enough
Lots of inputs for buttons - so the usual 16 input Ethercat cards are unlikely suitable
Few outputs for indicators/LEDs

pippin88 wrote:

Ethercat module for suitable HMI would be good.

I'm not going to pay $1000 for one.
 

Lol I doubt you'd pay $8 for one. What do you use an HMI for? Can't say I've seen alotta HMIs around here. Either way you'd have to code the entire interface yourself. I can make a touchscreen SPI HMI but I have no idea how to make that type of UI and I doubt many other people would want something like that.

Need:
Encoder counter for MPG wheel - 100 PPR
Inputs for rotary encoders for feed override, rapid override, spindle override - ?20PPR ?general GPIO input fast enough
Lots of inputs for buttons - so the usual 16 input Ethercat cards are unlikely suitable
Few outputs for indicators/LEDs

It sounds like you're talking about IO for a control panel.....That's literally what I'm making, I mentioned it several times. I already have a 32 button/LED keypad via I2C IO expander, just gotta get the code into the EtherCAT slave device.

blazini36 wrote:

Lol I doubt you'd pay $8 for one. What do you use an HMI for? Can't say I've seen alotta HMIs around here. Either way you'd have to code the entire interface yourself. I can make a touchscreen SPI HMI but I have no idea how to make that type of UI and I doubt many other people would want something like that.

Yes I am talking about a control panel. Apologies for having used the term HMI incorrectly. I have seen HMI used to refer to physical button panels as well, but googling now it looks like touchscreen interface is the most common use of the term.

EtherCat control panels seem to be stupid expensive:
www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004991516830.html
www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005290413894.html

blazini36 wrote:

It sounds like you're talking about IO for a control panel.....That's literally what I'm making, I mentioned it several times. I already have a 32 button/LED keypad via I2C IO expander, just gotta get the code into the EtherCAT slave device.

That's great. I look forward to when you share the design with the community.

I'm not sure if you are being intentionally argumentative?

In your original post:

blazini36 wrote:

Just the Beckoff stuff that's astronomical in cost and some servo drives.

I happened to be working on a PCB with pretty much the same hardware but I was searching for what code is currently out there when I came across that. Glad to see someone's done some of that work. I just thought it was odd that I see alot of talk about EtherCAT but nobody using stuff like this, or modules that don't cost $500 each. Honestly the EtherCAT chip itself has 16 GPIO so a pretty simple EtherCAT IO board can be made for like $20

But then when I suggest any approach that might be helpful for "it'd be nice to not spend $400 for an IO module" (your words), you respond negatively.

blazini36 wrote:

I came across that because I'm actually doing almost the same thing right now. I was kind of surprised because the components are readily available and not all that expensive yet I haven't seen anything EtherCAT that's actually useful really spoken about here.

EtherCat is very useful for servo and stepper drives. Having both step/dir interfaced, and EtherCat servos, I would go with EtherCat 100% of the time.

pippin88 post=297263 userid=16922

That's great. I look forward to when you share the design with the community.
 

That's not an open design bud, sorry if that was unclear. To clarify, none of the PCBs I'm talking about making are open designs. Most of the stuff I make is only made cuz it goes into something else....and I can't open source that. That's the case with whatever I'm talking about here.

You mentioned making an EtherCAT IO module....If you can do that you can make a keypad, and share if you like. If you post a question and I have an answer I'd be glad to help, PCW has helped me many times when I had a question about something I don't do often. I don't think I've ever asked him for the schematics for a 7i96 tho.

I have some code in LinuxCNC (written for me, not by me), I'll likely have some other relevant open source code to share soon. Just no PCBs at the moment

Those control panels you posted can't be made and sold for any less then that, they're industrial panels.....they won't be cheap. I've got a keyboard in my box that cost me $150...that's just how it goes. I do make something that's has the same purpose basically. The EtherCAT PCB I'm currently working on is for that. If I were to sell you this PCB you could make that panel yourself and stick this in it.

Yes I said "IO modules don't have to cost $400"....that's true. I think you get a bit unrealistic with the $3 dev boards. You're quoting my comment about being able to make one for $20 out of context, that's clarified in later posts as I was talking about a vendor. That's actually not quite true as I explained with the costs associated with testing.

All I'm saying is that I'm going to make some things for personal use. If they seem to work out well I am in a position where I can possibly meet the ETG requirements to offer them for sale, and possibly make other devices that make sense to make and sell. That depends on enough interest for me to cover the ETG costs, otherwise I'd just be burning money. By "make sense" I mean they are priced better than most anything else  you can get of that type, otherwise you'd be better off just buying the other thing.

pippin88 wrote:

For a new system, there would be no role for ethercat -> stepgen card -> servo/stepper.
 

Beckhoff have a number of Ethercat modules like the EL7031 which are step generators for stepper motors.

rodw wrote:

pippin88 wrote:

For a new system, there would be no role for ethercat -> stepgen card -> servo/stepper.
 

Beckhoff have a number of Ethercat modules like the EL7031 which are step generators for stepper motors.

Yes, but they cost $500 to $1000. So as much as a whole ethercat servo + driver.

About ready to run a prototype...

 

 

Just waiting on software