Category: Driver Boards
Looking for some guidance on best practice for Servo Enable for the 12A8 servo drives. The original control has an AC transformer that sends 50V AC to a PCB that contains a rectifier bridge for DC voltage, has the connectors for the motors and tach signals, an interface for the -10/+10V control signals, as well as 3 relays. One relay for the inhibit circuit for each drive and one to connect the DC drive voltage to the servo drives. However, all three relays are driven by one 12V control signal. I was hoping to reuse the existing power supply and pcb and plan to interface with it via the Mesa 7i97T. From what I've read though, you cannot have two output signals connected to one physical pin, for example X Servo and Y Servo enable both driven by X servo enable circuit.
Here are the options I'm considering:
1. Wire both enables from X and Y to the 12V relay, not sure if this would cause issues on the Mesa board if for some reason one servo was enabled and the other was not. Although, from reading the 7i97T manual, it seems like the enables are all switched in common?
2. Bypass the circuit board for enables and go straight to the drives with the enable circuit (However, I would still need to enable the relay to connect drive power, so not sure which signal I could use for this.) Perhaps I could make a new signal that would send 12V from the Mesa board if either of the X or Y drive enable commands are enabled, or route this to the estop switch and control it outside of the 7i97T.
3. Any better ideas?