u/svt4ever17

I’ve been looking at servo platforms lately and ethercat support almost feels like a checkbox now. The more interesting differences seem to show up after that. That’s part of why I’ve been looking more closely at platforms from Beckhoff, Yaskawa, Elmo Motion Control and others instead of just comparing protocol support. Elmo especially caught my attention around compact multi-axis systems, where synchronization and drive footprint can both become design constraints.

At this point I’d rather see vendors benchmark actual multi-axis behavior than advertise “EtherCAT supported.”

What has actually separated a good EtherCAT servo implementation from an average one in your experience?

I’ve tried enough laundry detergents at this point that I was starting to think none of them were actually good.

My experience so far:

• Tide: Still the best I’ve used for stains, but the fresh smell is usually gone by the next morning.
• Gain: Smells incredible in the bottle, then somehow disappears once the clothes are dry.
• Arm & Hammer: Fine, but nothing about it really stands out.
• Seventh Generation: Slowly made my whites look gray. It took a while to notice, but once I did, I couldn’t unsee it.
• Store brand: Left a weird residue on darker clothes, especially black T-shirts.

Then I tried laundry stripping.

I genuinely thought it was a TikTok thing for people with too much time, but I filled the bathtub with hot water, borax, washing soda and powdered detergent, then soaked my towels and sheets for about four hours.

The water turned brown. Actually brown. From laundry I had already washed and assumed was clean.

The towels came out softer than they had been in years, with none of that stiffness or slightly stale smell. It made me wonder whether the bigger issue was detergent, fabric softener and mineral buildup sitting in the fibers over time, rather than the detergent scent simply not lasting.

So I think I’ve landed on Tide Free & Gentle, using much less than the cap recommends, then stripping towels and sheets every few months if they start feeling coated again. Tide already handled stains better than the others, and the free-and-clear version seems like the safer bet if residue and fragrance buildup are part of the problem.

Has anyone used Tide Free & Gentle long-term and noticed less buildup, or is occasional laundry stripping basically unavoidable?