Design of the Servo Control System Based on EtherCAT P

Abstract

Abstract EtherCAT is fully compliant with Ethernet standards, with 100Mbps transfer speed and good synchronization. It is widely used in the industrial field, such as the servo control system, robots, and numerical control machine tool. There are still lots of wires for power and communication in these applications, especially in the complex multi-axis system, leading to high installation cost and poor reliability. In this paper, a novel servo control system based on EtherCAT P is proposed. The EtherCAT P technology is an addition to EtherCAT, which can enable the standard 4-wire Ethernet cable to transmit not only data but also two electrically isolated power supplies. The hardware design and software architecture of the servo control system are described including servo motor controller, powered device, and power sourcing devices. A servo control system with one servo slave and TwinCAT master is built and some tests are carried out. The experimental results verify the power supply capacity, stability, and motor control functions.