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A6 Ethercat servos are not step-dir compatible; pick one or the other.
Step-dir with Mesa will be easier to configure than Ethercat, but more wiring

What is complicated or expensive about connecting the step-dir drives to Mesa?  Buy a DB44 cable from Stepperonline and connect to Mesa - maybe I'm missing something?

Only headache I know is that the DB44 cable connector is HUGE, and sticks way out when plugged in to the drive.  If you have a tight enclosure you may not be able to shut the door on a standard 8" deep enclosure.

You can buy DB44 right-angle cables (no adapters I can find) to shorten the package a bit, or you can cut a hole in the enclosure door for the cables to stick out.  And 3D print a raised cover for the new hole...

EDIT - see last post for resolution and xml/HAL examples

Just dipping my toe in the ethercat waters and trying to set up a single drive on the bench.

I've got LCNC talking to the drive, and can start LCNC with a basic 1-axis config.  Very exciting to see the position change when I twist the motor shaft.  Much thanks to the forum!

Next move is to enable/configure the drive's IO, but none of the various xml file examples I could find in the forum appear to have mapped DI1-DI5 & DO1-DO3 to HAL pins.

I'd like to use all the DI/DO as general purpose IO (other than DO3 for a brake).  Does anyone have an xml file with all the IO defined and mapped?

And whatever else I need, maybe a HAL file with IO pin names?

Thanks for any examples or suggestions.

Hallo all,
im planning and building my own cnc from ground up with zero experience. Im in the final stages of planing but like many times before Im rethinking some basic descisions. 
Issue right now is I was planning on using linuxcnc with a mesa 7i96s and send commands to the drivers via step/dir. I plan on using stepper-online a6-series servos for my cnc and am aware that this is a kind of suboptimal setup as its not a fully closed loop system. I have ran into an issue connectiong the servo drives to the mesa, all options are eighter expensive or create a mess in my electrical box. I am considering switching to ethercat as the pricedifference is negligible. Rather it would actually save me money since the wiring is much cheaper and I don't need the mesa anymore. Problem is I already have the mesa (unused) and don't know what the best option would be.
1. Go full ethercat and sell mesa. 
2. Deal with the wiring issue by throwing money at it.
I hope someone with experience with eighter system or both can give me some help deciding or maybe give me pointers that I may not have considered before.
Many thanks in advance.

See comment 

Hey everyone

Next year, I will be building a CNC myself as a school project.
The idea is to use an old ABB IRB140 and mount a spindle on it.
I dont know anything about CNCs nor have I worked with one.

My question is, where to begin???

I welcome all information or help.

Thx in advance!!

Hello
I am trying to set up a cheap touch screen monitor so I can run Lcnc without a mouse and keyboard. The touch screen seems to work well. I have installed 'onboard' as a virtual keyboard, which allows me to log in via the touch screen, but once the os is fully loaded it won't let me type into any text box at all.  I am running Debian Bookworm, with a default xfc session and Lcnc is version2.9.8. 
Any help gratefully received.
Thanx

Hi axemas, Thank you for all your efforts.

I’m testing the [/code][/code][/code][/code][/code]

(ncam:27369): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 09:12:35.253: gtk_accel_label_set_accel_closure: assertion 'gtk_accel_group_from_accel_closure (accel_closure) != NULL' failed
/usr/bin/ncam:2538: DeprecationWarning: Gtk.UIManager.get_widget is deprecated
  self.main_toolbar = self.uimanager.get_widget("/ToolBar")
/usr/bin/ncam:3530: DeprecationWarning: Gtk.Action.set_visible is deprecated
  self.actionCurrent.set_visible(not self.pref.autosave)
/usr/bin/ncam:4453: DeprecationWarning: Gtk.Action.set_sensitive is deprecated
  self.actionUndo.set_sensitive(self.undo_pointer > 0)
Previous work not saved as current work
/usr/bin/ncam:3993: DeprecationWarning: Gtk.ToggleAction.get_active is deprecated
  if self.actionDualView.get_active() :

I’m trying to determine if additional steps are required to make it compatible.Any clarification or guidance would be appreciated.Thanks.
Doug[/code][/code][/code][/code][/code]

my best guess, shaublin just wrote a very difficult to control pid algorithm with slow speed seeking, and they had a team of engineers, and you'll notice , they got rid of the variator, sometimes the best part is no part. for my suggestion with the closed loop stepper, KEEP the existing worm gear angle driver, make a coupler and adapter slap a stepper in place of the existing AC motor. keep the acme screw and angle drive, looks doable without disassembling the machine from photos. Also my path is, 4 wires from you 2 from the psu and 2 step dir  card. it doesn't need to be decimal perfect.

Hello everybody!

I’m new to this forum and new to linuxcnc.
I own a 3-axis gantry mill that I used to control with mach3 connected to a USB Motion Controller.
The controller died a while ago and since I didn’t have any milling projects the machine has been sitting in at the corner for quite a while.Recently I decided to bring it back to life. The goal now is to to get rid of Windows and USB. I got a 7i92 Board that I could bring to life. I have installed linuxcnc from the latest available .iso file. In addition I have a WHB04B Pendant available, that I would like to integrate.
Linuxcnc is not very intuitive for a beginner, but I managed to get it working to some extend. I used an „axis“ configuration and could connect the pendant, I got to a point where the display on the pendant was updated when I moved the axis in linuxcnc and keypresses on the pendant showed up in linuxcnc, so the hardware/config is generally working, but I never got jogging to work. By now I have obviously tried too many things and messed up the configuration in a way that it is not working at all any longer.
To have a clear and clean configuration to start with, I would to prefer to restart from scratch.
So my question is:
Is there any HowTo and are there sample configurations that include the WHB04B?
Since I’m new to the world of Linux I assume the learning curve will be very steep.
Thanks in advance for your support!

P.S.
If this leads to success, I’m happy to log the details and to compile a step by step howto for beginners, since I couldn’t find any.

i am aware of the backlash but in this case it doesn't matter.

Thank you Tom

The current plan is to mount an inductive sensor on the motor shaft and let the VFD count the pulses. That way no additional EtherCAT hardware is required and the VFD (or LinuxCNC) is able to read the motor velocity for a future PID controller or similar. An encoder is not well placed at that spot, because the vertical milling head has quite a bit of dead-zone/backlash. To keep it as simple as possible while being accurate, we decided to mount the encoder on the milling head

Cool project! I like your PDF!

To the spindleencoder a hollow shaft encoder by calt on AliExpress is really low priced and should perfect fit the spindle.

To be honest i never understood why people mount an encoder to the head that is flipped away in horizontal mode. Even if you use it not that often - 50% of cool Features can not use rigid tapping. so you even less will use the cool horizontal mode. not a good place in my opinion. just mount the encoder to the motor and scale with the gearbox and you are happy for the z signal you only need an inductive sensor or similar on the horizontal spindle for reference.


greetings
Tom

Since we operate in vertical milling mode 99.9% of the time, we need to read the spindle position somewhere on the vertical milling head. Our current plan is to design and manufacture a resin (or similar) replacement part to substitute the white fan/impeller (or whatever the exact term is). By carefully cutting slots on the back, we should be able to mount an SSI encoder behind the hydraulic drawbar and drive it with a belt. If you have a better idea, let us know
We do actually have a second unused channel on the SSI encoder input terminal, eventually we will integrate the horizontal spindle too, but i don't think so.

Picture Source: Your Video "Why does my MAHO CNC spindle rattle? || RotarySMP" @ 1:57 ()

I still don't understand why the US made it so complicated. Here in .AU all we have is  single phase 240v (which Is slowly getting watered down to 230v or even 220 v to match some overseas countries) and 415 volt three phase. 3 Ph circuits can have an optional neutral wire and you get 240v from any phase and neutral. 380v I think is allowed but some people recommend using a transformer if running 380v machines. 

Nice Choice. It evens support IEEE1588 Precision Time Protocol that is behind TSN (Time sensitive networking),
One day , we will have Ethercat slaves and possibly even Mesa FGPA's that support TSN