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.

---

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”.

---

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.

---

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1. LinuxCNC
  • 1.2. System Hardware
• 2. igus® dryve D1 Controllers
  • 2.1. “Start” Page
  • 2.2. “Motor” Page
  • 2.3. “Axis” Page
  • 2.4. “Communication” Page
  • 2.5. “Inputs/Outputs” Page
  • 2.6. “Drive Profile” Page
  • 2.7. “Oscilloscope” Page
• 3. LinuxCNC
  • 3.1. Installation
  • 3.2. System Latency Analysis
  • 3.3. System Latency Tuning
  • 3.4. MESA 7I96S Board Configuration
  • 3.5. MESA 7I77 Board Configuration
  • 3.6. Introduction to LinuxCNC
  • 3.7. Basic LinuxCNC Usage
  • 3.8. LinuxCNC Configuration

• GNU Free Documentation License
• Bibliography