EtherCat to step and direction - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: vini_i
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2025, 06:43:01 pm
content: The back story is that we have a few hundred machines out in the field that have obsolete controllers. These output step and direction signals to servo motor drives.Our modern systems use a stand alone controller that connects to the DIO and servo drives via EtherCat.What I'm looking for is some type of card or module that can connect to EtherCat on one side and step and direction on the other side (also with some digital IO). Just the controller is obsolete, the motors and drives perfectly fine. It would be cost prohibitive to also replace all the motors and drive to modern ones.The hard part is that the device would need to preset itself on the EtherCat bus as a motor. Also each step and direction channel would need a digital out for enable and digital in for error.What I've looked at so far.Beckhoff EL2522. On paper this looks very promising. It will provide step and direction signals for two drives and do it synchronously every EtherCat cycle. The problems is that it does not present itself as a motor. Also it has no digital IO.ACS Motion Control PDMnt. Manufacturer states that this will only work with their controller.Advantech AMAX-3245. Again, looked very promising. Must use Advantech's motion controller. Actually demoed this one. Without the proprietary controller could not configure it enough to get it functional.Any other suggestions would me much apreciated.

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2025, 12:40:29 am
content: What are you looking for? Are you searching for an off the shelf complete product, or are you searching for info on devices (microcontrollers etc) that are capable of being an ethercat slave?And what is the bigger picture? If one controller is controlling all the (stepper or servo) motors in a system, then there is no need to use EtherCAT, but a "regular" ethernet connection probably suffices.I just saw a small part of:According to the desctiption, it uses an STM32F407VET6 uC and an LAN9252 This last is an IC that is an ethercat slave controller from Microchip, and it costs USD10 in small quantities.Maybe you want to have a look at the cards from Mesanet. Mesanet is quite popular with LinuxCNC. They sell cards that have both Ethernet and an FPGA, and in combination with LinuxCNC it can control a CNC machine with a bunch of motors.XMC8400 is apparently an uC from Infineon with built in EtherCAT slave hardware. I do have some interest in EtherCAT, but don't know the details very well. I think the master can be a standard ethernet interface (and also normal COTS switches can be used) but the slaves need a special controller to modify ethernet packets on the fly.https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/microcontroller/32-bit-industrial-microcontroller-based-on-arm-cortex-m/32-bit-xmc4000-industrial-microcontroller-arm-cortex-m4/xmc4800-f144k2048-aa/

author: vini_i
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2025, 03:44:05 pm
content: I'm looking for an off the shelf ready made solution.Our main modern controller is exclusively ethercat. We don't want to redevelop our entire system for another controller.

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2025, 08:48:31 pm
content: Quote from: vini_i on July 14, 2025, 03:44:05 pmI do not understand.I was not suggesting to create a whole new controller, I was only suggesting at designing an EtherCAT slave that can be integrated into the rest of the system. Maybe you can use an EtherCAT to Modbus bridge, and then run the old system from modbus (or similar).