Flexible PC-based CNC machine control system
In the article a PC-based CNC machine control system is presented which communicates with servo drives and auxiliary input/output devices via EtherCAT bus. LinuxRTAI real-time operating system and LinuxCNC control software were implemented in the PC controller. A software module implementing EtherCAT communication with the servo drives was developed and integrated with LinuxCNC. Experimental results were presented which show the trajectory smoothing capabilities of the control system. Experimental results were also presented that show following errors obtained by running an example trajectory on a linear motion module. Basic parameters that show the control systems capabilities obtained during the experimental tests have been presented. The CNC control system presented in this article was implemented on a 3-axis machine.