LinuxCNC Motor Control Testbed

A motor control testbed using the open-source LinuxCNC platform integrated with the Mesa Electronics 7i96S and 7I77 interface cards and the igus® dryve D1 motor controllers.

This system was used to develop and validate the control system for a large high-precision 3-axis gantry robot system.

testbed_video.webm

Key Features

• Real-time Control: Precise real-time multi-axis motion using LinuxCNC with MESA interface cards and igus® dryve D1 motor controllers.
• Dual Motor System: Stepper and brushless motors.
• Closed Loop Control: High-precision encoder feedback for accurate positioning.
• Safety Systems: Emergency stop and limit switches.
• Visual Indicators: Custom LED status system.

Documentation

• Technical Documentation: Sphinx documentation sources of the system documentation in docs/. The documentation has been prepared to be built in HTML and PDF formats. To build the documentation follow the instructions below:

  1. Prepare the environment:

     cd docs
     uv venv && uv sync && source .venv/bin/activate

  2. Build the documentation:

     • HTML: make html

       The HTML documentation index file will be saved in docs/build/html/index.html.

     • PDF (requires a LaTeX installation with LuaLaTeX): make latexpdf

       The PDF file will be saved in docs/build/latex/linuxcnc_motor_control_testbed.pdf.

• Electrical Schematics: KiCAD electrical schematics in schematics/.

Hardware Components

Component	Model	Quantity	Function
Control Computer	PC running LinuxCNC	1	Real-time motor coordination
Motor Controllers	igus® dryve D1	2	Individual motor control
Main Interface	MESA 7I96S	1	Ethernet-LinuxCNC bridge. Stepper motor control. Limits detection
I/O Expansion	MESA 7I77	1	Brushless motor control. Encoder inputs. Emergency stop detection and LED indicators
Stepper Motor	STEPPERONLINE 17HS24-2104-ME1K	1	Stepper motor with 1000 PPR magnetic encoder
Brushless Motor	STEPPERONLINE 42BLS40-24-01 + CUI Devices AMT102-0512-I5000-S	1	Brushless motor with 512 PPR optical encoder
Power Supply	Aim-TTI EL302RD	1	Dual output (24V/5V)
Emergency Stop	Push-button with NO/NC contacts	1	System safety shutdown
Limit Switches	Push-button switches	2	Position boundary detection
LED Indicators	24 V panel mount LEDs	3	System state indication

System Architecture

Repository Structure

linuxcnc-testbed/
├── README.md      # This file
├── assets/        # Pictures and videos
├── docs/          # Technical Documentation
├── linuxcnc/      # LinuxCNC configurations
├── schematics/    # Wiring diagrams
├── scripts/       # Example control scripts
└── gcode/         # G-code example

License

General License (unless otherwise specified)

LinuxCNC Motor Control Testbed © 2025 by Tomás Domínguez Bolaño, Valentín Barral Vales, Carlos José Escudero Cascón, and José Antonio García Naya (CITIC Research Center, University of A Coruña, Spain) is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). To view a copy of this license, see the LICENSE-CC file or visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.

Documentation License (docs/)

Copyright © 2000-2022 LinuxCNC.org
Copyright © 2025 Tomás Domínguez Bolaño, Valentín Barral Vales, Carlos José Escudero Cascón, and José Antonio García Naya.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by grant PID2022-137099NB-C42 (MADDIE) and by project TED2021-130240B-I00 (IVRY) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR.