Mesa Board for 5 axis + ATC Carousel

Hello,

I am building a big cnc machine (it's almost done) and could need some help with the selection of mesa cards. I'm reading several topics on the forum, but I'm still having a lot of doubts about which mesa board is ideal for my project. Sorry for the limited knowledge.

As an overview about my project:
- 5 axis VMC (3axis + 2axis optional)
- main spindle is belt driven by servo and has separate spindle encoder
- ATC unit, the carousel is a servo rotary axis with pneumatic rotary / pneumatic extension axis.

All axes will have servo motors controlled via step/dir, not sure if it is necessary to use linear scale for feedback (I'm still undecided about it)


I would like an ethernet mesa board for my project. Could someone help me with which options would be ideal for this machine? I saw that several boards are out of stock on the mesa's official website

Regards,
Vitali M.

How are the various servo drives commanded?  Step/dir, analog, PWM?  Mesa board selection will be determined by this.

sorry,

I forgot to mention, step/dir

the servo on the ATC will be controled by step/dir 

I was really looking at the 7i96S, but I was in doubt about how to have more step/dir, because in my case, I need 6 in total (5 axes + 1 for the ATC/magazine).


according to the 7I96S manual:
"The 7I96S has a 26 pin header to allow I/O expansion beyond the built in I/O on the 7I96S card."
www.mesanet.com/pdf/parallel/7i96man.pdf

 

To add more step/dir axis you would add a daughtercard on the parallel expansion port
say a 7I85S that adds 4 more step/dir channels or a inexpensive BOB like the common
"5 Axis Mach 3" BOB