Newbie- Two motors on one axis

[13AL]

Firstly, Hi from Southern Vermont, USA. Just joined today, first post!
Control wise, how would two stepper motors be connected and synced to move one axis, for instance a heavy gantry that is not connected under the table, would both motors be run from one larger controller?, or two controllers sharing the wiring from the breakout board?. I don't have any electronics yet, i'm still in the design stage.

[Woodbutcher-59]

Hi,

Welcome to the forum...

Normally two motors on one axis are synced by the control software, Mach 3 in my case...and each motor has its own driver.

My new machine will have 4 motors running off a Gecko G540 which is 4 drivers and Breakout Board in one box.

Axis's are labeled X, Y, Z, and A with X and A being synced by Mach 3 for the twin motors driving the X axis.

When you are ready, plenty of help here to get ya going !!

Jeff

[underthetire]

I've run double motors off one drive, but they were $$$$$ linear motors. To line them up for same phasing, you would need an O-Scope. Double drives with the double motors and syncing them with control software is much easier.

[13AL]

Thanks!!
I never gave it a thought that it would be handled by the software.
Are there any special requirements to look for in a breakout board for
this type of setup?

[brtech]

Not much. Just 4 axis support. Mach takes care of the rest.

'course it needs to support Mach, but most controllers connected to the parallel port do.

You often want to have two home sensors, one on each side, to allow Mach to square your gantry.

[13AL]

Thanks brtech!
Good to know about the dual home sensors.

[Rob K]

If you were to use 2 of your Gecko 540 drives to run dual steppers on one axis (say X), and then used your other 2 drives for Y & Z, what would be the best solution to add a 4th axis (5th drive) for adding a lathe to your router?

Dual parallel ports are not common on PC's. Are there usb options, or is an add-on PCI parallel port the best solution? Will Mach3 or EMC readily support another parallel port with another Gecko or Breakout board?

[ger21]

A PCI card is the cheapest option. You can add a breakout board and G251.

As for USB, you can get a Smoothstepper, which gives you two parallel ports via a USB connection.

Not sure about EMC, but Mach3 supports two parallel ports. Be aware, though, that if you use an external motion device like the Smoothstepper, you can't use the standard parallel ports along with the Smoothstepper ports. It's one or the other.

[CarveOne]

EMC2 supports two parallel ports. They will have different hex port addresses.

CarveOne