> > EtherCAT is used extensively in industry, a signification number of the > CNC controllers now only support EtherCAT servos and IO. > > The cost of using EtherCAT for CNCs has dropped significantly in the > last 5 years with a number of smaller suppliers of servo hardware > producing products. > > Companies like LNC (www.lnc.com.tw) and Moon Industries > (https://www.moonsindustries.com). > > My family business has been using EtherCAT hardware on our wool sampling > machines for the last 7 years. Its totally changed how we think about > our machines and the way forward. I can say with 100% certainly that we > would not be making our machines any more if I had not found EtherCAT > eight years ago. > > Now for the purposes of making a BBB MachineKit board which make the job > of controlling my DIY / semi-commercial CNC. > > I'm not sure. It would be cool. > > But do not dismiss the idea out of hand. The ASIC's are not that > expensive and there are other suppliers out there who are interested in > having there chips/products used by DIY. > > One of these is > https://www.bausano.net/en/hardware/ethercat-e-arduino/easycat.html or > > https://www.bausano.net/en/hardware/ethercat-e-arduino/ethercat-and-raspberry.html > > > Cheers All > > Mike > > Maybe Ethercat is more prevalent than what I see, I still see alot of Modbus in use even on higher end drives.
Well the bus can be mastered now, using hal drivers at the cost of only the BB ethernet port AFAIK. The slave is the hardware concern, albeit dedicating some PRU resources from the BBAI or an on board ASIC. What's that do to the seeed board if the seed board is looking to support both the BBB which can't do ethercat on the PRU (AFAIK) and the BBAI that supposedly can. Would it be worth the complication on a board like this? Is Mesa SS a good concession considering the concerns above about extra IO that can easily be added on a SS channel, and I'm sure work for both BB's universally? -- website: http://www.machinekit.io blog: http://blog.machinekit.io github: https://github.com/machinekit --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Machinekit" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to machinekit+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/machinekit/647130d7-bf2a-4b2e-bc82-aac821fbd849n%40googlegroups.com.
