Category: EtherCAT
I think Beckhoff and Rexroth have a distributed Ethercat drive system where the drive is built into the servo and there is only one power and data cable. I've never used them and I'm sure they are pricey. If you use quality cabling I don't think the length will be a problem. You could also mount an EK1100 on the carriage and/or the far end to locally terminate signals to Ethercat vs running them individually back.
I would suggest connecting the limit switches and linear scales directly to the servo drive...I think you will get the best closed-loop performance by letting the drive handle it all. If you are going to all this trouble I would also be sure and get absolute encoders so you don't have to deal with homing on this large a machine.
