Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

I currently have a Beckhoff EL7041 terminal sat on my desk awaiting evaluation for integration into our EPICS control system for the CLARA project.

 

I also have a CX5020 Beckhoff embedded PC and have purchased the TwinCAT 3 motion runtime and the Modbus TCP extension.  Options for integration include using the Modbus software, integrating directly with the TwinCAT ADS communication library (which I believe LIGO have done with EPICS) or direct integration with the Diamond EtherCAT/EPICS software that we currently use for analog I/O.

 

We shall be investigating these various options over the next few months.

 

Graham

 

 

Hi Mitch,

 

We are looking into EPICS/EtherCAT motion control right now as well. Beckhoff’s recommendation does include EL7xxx terminals but since we are still in the vendor selection phase I can’t comment on integrating EL7xxx terminals. I can say that we’ve had minimal trouble with any of the other Beckhoff terminals we are using (analog, digital, incremental encoder) and we’ve even got a couple of their embedded PCs (one running TwinCAT 2 and the other TwinCAT 3) integrated as well. The embedded PCs do require a little more work than EtherCAT terminals. If you do go down the path of using Beckhoff EtherCAT for motion control I’d be interested in hearing how it works out for you.

 

Thanks,

Damien