EMC2 from Mach3 issues

[bevins]

Hi all,

I know this has been asked but I still have issues with it.
I have a 3 axis router with two motors connected to the Y axis. In Mach3 it is simply a slave A to Y and it works fine. I am leaving Mach3/winblows for a more stable system as I have ruined two pieces of fine wood because of windows and or Mach3. Maybe the computer also but here I am.

I am using the stepconf wizard trying to set A as slave to Y in the following manner. See screenshot. I am using a gecko G540 driver.



The computer is a 3.2 Ghz 2 gig ram. Linux seems to be setup properly. I can't ssh into though but thats no biggie.

I loaded it from the Live CD and installed it on the drive.

The controller is a G540 with 8-8start leadscrews on the X and Y with two motors on the Y. The z is a 10-5start. I am having issues with the speeds but the main issue right now is the two motors pon the Y is not working. I set it up as I found some threads here on it as sharing the Y with two different sets of pins but the second Y motor is not moving and my Gantry racks.

Can anyone help in this scenario?

Thanks in advance,

Bob

[scotta]

Hi Bob,

I also have the G540 and a gantry style setup (although not built yet). With EMC you can do this in two ways. The first is to use Gantrykins to slave the two axes. This needs to be loaded via your config files and can be setup to slave Y and A axes.

There are some issues with this method though. To my knowledge no one has got homing to work as EMC will home each axis at a time (as homing does not use the kinematics). This can / will distroy a gantry setup as the Y axis will home, twisting the gantry, and the the A (Y2) axis will home, not together. Also when jogging in EMC you need to be in coordinated motion mode, in joint mode the two axis are not slaved.

The other method, and simplest, is via the step config and just set multiple outputs to be Y step and direction signals. Both motors will always drive together regardless of the kinematics setup. The only downside is that you will manually have to square the gantry. Not so bad.

This is what you have shown in your setup and it should work, myself and others are using EMC like this. I'd check you hal config to double check that the connections are as you would expect.

Hope this helps.

Scott

[Heinz Reimer]

What you're after is often called a gantry configuration, which I don't believe is supported yet by stepconf wizard http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.....emc.user/6902
Lots of people have done this with EMC2, but the documentation isn't great.

The following site may help http://axis.unpy.net/01162326817

Additionally, searching the EMC2 mailing list archives using the terms gantry, slaved, or tandem provides information you may find useful.
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.di...tions.emc.user

Good luck!
HR

[bevins]

hehe, welcome back to the world of Linux I guess is in store...:-)

Thanks,
Bob

[bevins]

********************EDIT*************************

I think I found out how to do it. Stepgen in the Hal file. But its not working.haha, anyone have a working Hal file I can look at?

thanks again,

Bob

[Heinz Reimer]

Bob

There is a sample stepper-gantry configuration you can choose when EMC2 starts, which provides the kinematics you need. This particular one was written for a torch table, so includes a bunch of stuff you may or may not need, like a second paraport for limit switches and torch control.

You would simply need to manually edit the hal and ini files to match your configuration.

Good luck
HR

[pfred2]

Some Linux stuff may be a chore to setup initially. But look at it this way, once you set Linux up you're done until a hardware failure takes down the system. The last time that happened to me the HDD lived, so I built another system, dropped it in, and ran off it.

Now that has to be worth some trouble.

If it sounds too good to be true it usually is, unless it's Linux!