- July 12, 2012
July 12, 2012–The MESA 7I76 card set is a FPGA based 5 Axis step/dir control system for CNC, industrial automation retrofits, and OEM systems. 5 Axis of hardware step generators allow step rates up to 8 MHz. Step and direction outputs are differential for noise immunity. Analog spindle control and spindle encoder inputs (TTL or differential) are also provided.
The PCI or PCIE host interface provides robust realtime access to the motion hardware. In addition to the motion related I/O, 32 digital inputs and 16 digital outputs are provided. These digital I/O points are isolated from the system ground and can use 5V to 32V I/O voltage. Inputs have a threshold of ½ the I/O voltage for high noise immunity.
Outputs can supply 300 mA each and are short circuit protected. I/O can be expanded to more than 400 I/O points with realtime access or up to 12 motion axis. The 7I76 card set is fully supported by LinuxCNC. All FPGA firmware is open source and easily modified to support new functions or different mixes of functions.