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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.
 

I have never used EtherCAT as in doing a full setup, although i have fixed industrial machines using it i never had to mess with the EtherCAT part, so no idea.
I have used and use a lot of Mesa boards, they are worth every cent/penny/dime as they are extremely reliable and come with the best support on planet earth in the shape of PCW (an active member here), so i will not be switching to EtherCAT ever, especially since i learned it lacks some important stuff for me.
BTW, whatever the price for Mesa is, i have to pay at least double to get them here (black hole named Kosovo), still, i pay it gladly.
Reminds me, have to order some THCAD, installed the last one today.

The other part I always mess up is after installing.

so I’m going to config a machine with 7i76eu + thcad-2 (I think, whatever model the currently have). So I need to configure the system with plasmac

i alway alway forget how to set plasmac on the system.