Hi,
if you think that going the Ethercat route is cheap....then I think you are in for a rude awakening. If you think you can buy cheap
Chinese stuff and get it to work I think you are going to waste some serious money.
The whole point of Ethercat is a QUALITY CNC solution....and you don't achieve a QUALITY result by using cheap junky servos and IO modules.
You'd be better off sticking to PoKeys and Leasdshine.
one thing i forget ask ,is this plugin its also for hobby or only industrial
I'm not 100% sure but I think either.
Ethercat is a realtime bus communication protocol....it does not have any 'affinity' with any given software. Kingstar is the provider of the
Ethercat/Mach4 plugin. The question is best posed to them.
My understanding is that you buy a Kingstar license and that includes the Interval Zero runtime license. Smurph has previously recommended
that it be installed on a capable PC, probably an i5 or i7 with generous RAM etc.
Ethercat can have up to 100 slave devices. This makes it very attractive in manufacturing situations where you may have several machines
with conveyors and/or robots between each. All the wiring and cabling reduces to a pair of ethernet cables between slave devices.
There was a time when it was not legally permissable to run safety data (things like Estops, door interlocks etc) over an Ethercat bus, or
in fact any bus. Thus all that safety cabling had to be run manually which rather detracted from the lean and elegant Ethercat cabling scenario.
My understanding is that Ethercat has matured to the point that government safety regulators permit safety data be transmitted over
Ethercat. There are Ethercat slave devices which are designed and approved for use as safety devices....you'll recognise them by virtue of costing
five times as much!
Ethercat was always intended to be used in industrial situations where the bus communication and distributed motion control strategy represents
a distinct advantage which overcomes the cost premium. For a standalone machine of two/three/four/five axes and spindle only the Ethercat
is an costly solution compared to a centralised motion control board like a PoKeys ad standard servos.
You really need to do some serious research and establish a business case for Ethercat......its going to cost more than usual.....how much more
is the question.
Craig