StepperOnline A6 Servo

 Hello, I'm currently retrofitting a cnc router that I build a couple years ago and switching to EtherCAT AC servos.

The specific model is StepperOnline A6 400watt.At the moment, I'm trying to get one drive up and working and not having luck getting a motor turning.I installed a fresh copy of LinuxCNC 2.9.3 per the sticky by RodW and that side of it is working fine.
I'm also able to see the slave, pdos, etc by using the ethercat command in the terminal.My problem is I can't get the drive to go into operation mode and hold/turn the motor.It goes through init mode but stays on preop mode.

I've attached the relevant files (hopefully) here if someone can help?Thanks!

looks like you have the order of the read_all and write_all wrong.(lcec should be first and last) but not sure if that's what has broken it.

Success!

I believe the real issue was the drive didn't like the PDOS I had in the xml.
Even though my original settings were one of the "Fixed PDO mapping" options from the manual (1704 & 1B02).
Anyway, I switched it to the "Variable PDO mapping" 1600 & 1A00 and the drive goes to OP mode and comes alive when I enable the machine!

Has anyone had success with setting up the CIA402 homing mode?

Related question on these servo drivers, I have noticed that they share the same .xml file in the download section (Link below) for any power from 100W to 1 Kw. The settings for LCNC are all the same for any model of servo driver? where can I find info to understand what's inside this .xml file?

www.omc-stepperonline.com/index.php?rout...E_A6_Servo_V0.04.xml

They may not be exactly the same in every aspect, but when they are cia402 devices they do have the same (subset of) pdo numbers and functions.

That xml file is an ESI file, ethercat slave information. Linuxcnc doesn't use it. The same information can be read from the slave, try ethercat sdos and ethercat pdos. That will list most of what's in that file. You need to join the ethercat technology group to get access to documents describing the esi file. For an explanation of sdos and pdos of your drive, the manual of course.

Hi Hakan, thank you for the informations,

during the servo configuration there are a lot of parameter to tweak, are there any parameter that can fry the driver/motor?

Hello dschultz,
could you share your working configuration?
I have the same servo but are not able to switch it to OP mode.
Thanks!

These are basic with just the X axis.

Thanks a lot, I can confirm your configuration works.

These are my first steps using ethercat. My mistake was that I added sdoConfig commands in the ethercat.xml to configure the PDO mapping like described in the servos manual.
Seems like it's sufficient to just add the pdoEntry's for the desired PDO mapping group and somehow it's configured automatically. By linuxcnc or the ethercat subsystem?
Maybe someone can comment/confirm this to avoid others making the same mistake.

Hi, so I'm a total noob regarding linuxcnc and servos, but hopefully someone here can help.

I got the A6 servos and I've set up a RPi5 with Ethercat. With your config I'm able to energise the servo (only one connected atm.) however I cant get it to move. If I try jogging it I immediately get an error "joint 0 following error" and a X symbol, and the servo de-energises. I get position readout in the DRO. I've tried increasing FERROR and MIN_FERROR a lot, then I don't get any errors but the servo wont move.

Thank you in advance!