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A ethercat digital output card can not drive a stepper motor, it is too slow.
Best is to use an ethercat-integrated stepper motor driver, such as rtelligent ect60.
A really slow encoder (a few Hz) can possible be read with the EL1008. The EL510x is otherwise needed, especially for the arc voltage reading.

If you already have stepper motors and drivers, mesa is the best way. There is one card that has all functions needed.

RPI must be near the screen, you can have 30 meter long LAN cable to Mesa and it works even for plasma machines, tested, but HDMI will have huge issues in such environments even at 1.5 meter long cable, and you also need USB for touch screen, probably.

Hello to all.

I'm using LinuxCNC about 10 years with parallel port PC on several machine. They were succesfull setups.

But now I have a new project and I think that something needs to be change...

Let me explain my new project;

• 5 axis, step/dir driven motor drivers
• 1 home switch for each axes, totaly 5
• 1 end switch for all axes, totaly 1
• 1 e-stop
• 4 extra digital outputs
• 2 extra digital inputs
• Sum up;
  • OUTPUTS: 5 step, 5 dir, 4 digital output
  • INPUTS: 9 digital inputs

 

• The LinuxCNC is going to run on Raspberry pi ( not decided whether 4 or 5)
• There is a teach pendant with touch screen( there will be no screen more), everything is going to be controlled by this screen
• The distance between screen and machine will be min. 2 meters.
• The machine is going to be used for welding in industrial environment.

Here is what I couldnt decide or have a reservations...

• If I will place Raspberry pi inside the teach pendant, there will be a 3 meters distance between I/Os and pi. So I have to use MESA board or Ethercat I/O board (I have never used any of them before) to combat with electronical parasits.
  • Negative side of using MESA board is there is no domestic dealers in Turkiye and if I wanted to buy externally there may be some problems with customs. If I overcome this problem, this card is ideal for me...
  • Negative side of using Ethercat I have no information in this world. In Turkiye I can easily find Beckhoff products and I think I have to use EK1100, EL1008 and EL2008 for my setups. But there is a big question for me, Can I drive stepper drivers with EL2008(digital output module) or Do I have to buy a EL7031 (motor controller) ?
    And as a similar question, Can I read an encoder with EL1008 or Do I have to buy EL5101 (encoder reader) ?
• If I will place Raspberry pi outside the teach pendant, there will be a 3 meters distance between the screen and pi. So I will use 3mt HDMI cable. On the I/O side I will use raspberry pi's GPIO pins. Do you think will this be a problem with 5 axis movement?

I know it is a little confusing but its same here ....
Can you offer me an another solution or Is my path correct?

I'm using LinuxCNC 2.9.1 on a Raspberry Pi 400 with Debian 12 "Bookworm" (just for benchmarking, will upgrade to desktop when I get everything installed on a real machine) and connected to a Mesa 7i96s.

The 7i96 is connected to a DM542t, which is then connected to a Nema 23 stepper motor () that is set up for the X axis. I installed everything and ran the Mesa config tool and it shows a connection to the 7i96s.

When I turned everything on I was driving the stepper motor and knew this because it was frozen and I couldn't turn it.

The connection between the 7i96s and the driver is as follows:

Step 0--->Drag-

Step 0+ -> Pool+

Directory-->Directory-

Catalog+ -> Catalog+

I don't know where to start troubleshooting, any information would be helpful.

Thanks.[/url]

I could not use Eagle so I have remodeled Oliver's OCB in KiCad.
I use different connectors. Noved the 5 outputs to the oppesire sides and have 5V/24V selection on all inputs (also wih option to change resisor values). Also added some capacitors.
If I make a new version I would use 6 pin JST to get 5V from the Raspberry PI. Possibly add MAX485+protection circuit to the board.
If there is demand I can put the Kicad files on github.

itai wrote:

I am switching LinuxCNC from an old PC to RaspberryPI + Tango compatible board.
I see that riocore has support for HY_VFD and I want to use it. After resolving simple issues I can get a serial signal out of the Tang Nano, but no connectio to the VFD yet. I guess I will need a TTL to RS485 brekout board. Will this one do?

Last time that I made changes to the HY_VFD configuration it cost me a burnt spindle, so now I'm trying to learn more and if possible from other's experience. I will appreciare any help and suggestions.
Thanks!
-- Itai
 

Is your vesion of the Tango board a modified PCB? and is there Kicad or PCB repository.  Just so I can compare the difference with Olivers version.
Many thanks 

I am switching LinuxCNC from an old PC to RaspberryPI + Tango compatible board.
I see that riocore has support for HY_VFD and I want to use it. After resolving simple issues I can get a serial signal out of the Tang Nano, but no connectio to the VFD yet. I guess I will need a TTL to RS485 brekout board. Will this one do?
Last time that I made changes to the HY_VFD configuration it cost me a burnt spindle, so now I'm trying to learn more and if possible from other's experience. I will appreciare any help and suggestions.
Thanks!
-- Itai
 

Good morning, I'm confused!

I'm actually making a scara but I couldn't change the home screen, etc. I'm using a theme from a router... and I want to change it to a scara. Can you help me?

Hello bertoldo,
I have no experience with Raspberry Pi. I do with Laptop + Debian 12 RT kernel + LinuxCNC
Here is my files for SCARA with Gmoccapy demo.
You just need to revise EtherCAT "xml" file to meet your real motor servo controller.
Hope you find it helpful.
Tks.
 
 
 

Was going to open a new thread, but thought the image authors might want to get some feedback that might relate to the image.

Installed the 2.9.3 image on a RPi5 and after a few self-inflicted hiccups everything seems OK, including qtpyvcp/probe basic.

Except the touchscreen isn't reconized.  lsusb does't show the touchscreen.

I've got the touchscreen connected through a powered external USB hub, and I've tried every other combination of ports.  The RPi5 seems really picky about what hardware works (or doesn't) on various ports.

Keyboard w/touchpad is fine, as is a usb trackball.  Both of those work through the hub and directly in one of the Pi's ports.

Any ideas on what to do about the touchscreen?  Monitor is one of those generic 15.6 things, and works fine on everything else it's plugged in to.