AX58100 IN OUT PINES

Unfortunately my Herocut plasma gives full arc voltage. I also have a THCAD 300 card to interface with.
It's a possibility what you say. Anyone wishing to give it a go have all the schematics and pcb layouts
as a starter, and all software needed to deliver values over EtherCAT on github.

You know the path isn't always that straight when I develop things. I started with the LAN9252 and it is more or less coincidental that I went with the Ax58100. And you are right, they are used as gateways. In the setup with a MCU I don't really see a difference, can go with any of the two. They are both available on aliexpress and cost about the same. I have gone back to the LAN9252.

For the plasma build, my initial thoughts with EaserCAT-3000 card and the Ax58100 was to use existing stepper motor drivers and have the card do pulse/dir. While that now works, I have skipped that path and are now going to use ECT60 Ethercat stepper motor drives. My own cards will be used for Digital IO (limit switches, float switch, break-away switch, torch on), and for reading the THCAD-300.

Here is the reader for THCAD. A stripped version of the EaserCAT-3000, with LAN9252. The MCU reads PWM frequency on one pin. Could definitely use a smaller MCU, but it is also easy to reuse what I know works.


Digital IO. This card does use the DIO of the LAN9252 directly, no MCU.


I find that the documentation for the Ax58100 is lacking for the special functions, like stepper motor driver. There is a reference application supplied that uses TwinCAT to drive a stepper motor. I guess one could try to understand how all that works, but I haven't. And that is all info I know of.
 

Thanks for the detailed answer. Its always a bit difficult to comment on projects you dont know about.

The asix chips look nice on paper but then again if you pair it with a MCU, how much benefits are there, I don't know? I was just wondering if there are benefits from the programming side so that it would make sense to use that instead of the LAN9252. I have 0 experience with the asix chips so I would love to hear from people that have used both.

Although both maybe available on aliexpress, I would say the LAN9252 is far more obtainable than the asix chips. I typically try to scan something like octoparts for any "special" components I might use, at least if there is even a small chance I make something more than one. A quick look and just digikey and mouser stock these in the thousands. I lost my mind on the chip shortage so now days I try to find multiple sources for parts and if I'm lucky multiple alternatives.

Good luck with your plasma build!

With the use of SOES github.com/OpenEtherCATsociety/SOES there is no difference for me as a programmer.
There is a tiny difference in how to reset the ESC chip, LAN9252 can be reset by writing over SPI, AX58100 need a pin to go low.
Ax58100 also has a pin for a led that indicates successful read of the eeprom. Pretty useless but has been nice diagnostics when starting up the board.
Other than that one can consider them identical.
I have seen someone state that the AX58100 is faster than the LAN9252. I can not see that, I haven't been in a situation where I can identify the ESC speed as a factor, on individual usec level.

hackaday.io/project/181058-ethercat-serv...e/log/196311-ax58100

Some info on LAN9252 vs AX58100

@Hakan Thanks for creating and sharing, I got the AX58100 working again. It's a very good project to share and learn. I've learned a lot from this project. It's a good starting point to learn how to create and use Ethereum by myself. There are some contents related to STM32 MCU, suitable for those who have no background. It works on VSCode, very beginner-friendly. I will update my board again.

This is the AX58100 SPI to STM32F407VGT6 connection test board with Axis and IO expansion board.
I haven't made it into 1PCB yet due to the price constraints of PCB size exceeding 100X100mm.
I'm adding the DAC Op-amp circuit and waiting for the test. Encoder connection.

@ pippin88  Yes, I started with this project to work with STMBL, but I was still a newbie with Ethercat, it was very confusing for me until I discovered Hakan's project that exposed kikad and explained it in detail on YouTube, with immediate response when I had problems via Github.

The asix chips look nice on paper but then again if you pair it with a MCU, how much benefits are there, I don't know? I was just wondering if there are benefits from the programming side so that it would make sense to use that instead of the LAN9252. I have 0 experience with the asix chips so I would love to hear from people that have used both.

Although both maybe available on aliexpress, I would say the LAN9252 is far more obtainable than the asix chips. I typically try to scan something like octoparts for any "special" components I might use, at least if there is even a small chance I make something more than one. A quick look and just digikey and mouser stock these in the thousands. I lost my mind on the chip shortage so now days I try to find multiple sources for parts and if I'm lucky multiple alternatives.

I followed hackaday.io/project/181058-ethercat-serv...e/log/196311-ax58100 for years before the project switched to AX58100. There was a description between the two chips that I didn't quite understand until I found Kahan's project that switched to AX58100 and I followed suit.

Hakan wrote:

With the use of SOES github.com/OpenEtherCATsociety/SOES there is no difference for me as a programmer.
There is a tiny difference in how to reset the ESC chip, LAN9252 can be reset by writing over SPI, AX58100 need a pin to go low.
Ax58100 also has a pin for a led that indicates successful read of the eeprom. Pretty useless but has been nice diagnostics when starting up the board.
Other than that one can consider them identical.
I have seen someone state that the AX58100 is faster than the LAN9252. I can not see that, I haven't been in a situation where I can identify the ESC speed as a factor, on individual usec level.

If so, I will try LAN9252 on the next board.

I just received a new PCB that I designed based on an AXIS sample project. It is a CIA402 test board.
According to the AXIS manual, it uses an STM32H745, which has 2 cores, both H7 and H4, and is expensive. I saw that all the configuration examples only use the H4 core, so I designed another STM32H723 as an alternative. It has a single core, the H7. It costs almost the same as the F407, which is much cheaper than the H745.

When I finish building the PCB, I hope to compile the files successfully with the knowledge I have gained from Hakan.