Question about slave stepper

[jzurek]

I am in the process of designing a CNC based off of the Solsylva design. My dad built one before and had great things to say about all of the support here, hopefully someone can offer some experience.

Firstly, my machine has always been designed to slave A to X.

I have purchased a 4-axis kit from Xylotex. I am building my subpanel for my 12x12x6 stainless enclosure and (we) decided that this machine should have a 4th axis for spindle work.

My Xyoltex board is setup for X, Y, Z, A by default and Dad has purchased a Probotix chopper board for the 4th axis. My initial thought was to slave A to X. But now that I have another board, I can only take the connections out on the BOB connections as B, C, etc.

Here is the question, is it best to slave the steppers off the same board as my X-Axis or should I use the Probotix board as axis B and slave B to X and leave A for spindle (turning) work?

I don't think I can reassign my 4th axis in my CAM software (PowerMill 9)

So much to learn!

Attached is a pic of the current subpanel progress.... still waiting on a 30A relay for the spindle and the Probotix board to come in.

The steppers will be connected via 18AWG Turck cables with drain and the limit switches via 22AWG Turck cables with drain.

Comments and suggestions are welcome! Thanks in advance.

[ger21]

I'd use the Xylotex for both the master and slave.

You can assign the A axis on the Xylotex as the B axis in Mach3. The only thing making it the A is the label on the board.

[jzurek]

Ger21,

Pardon my inexperience, but how would I do that? Would I simply change the pinouts on the B-axis in Mach3 to match the actual pinouts on the Xylotex board (that is currently designated as the 'A-Axis' ?

[ger21]

Yes.
If it uses pins 8 and 9, then just enable the B axis, and assign pins 8 and 9 to it.

[jzurek]

Thanks for the help!