Re: 4-axis control

> Are you saying that EMC is already internally
> capable of translating XYZ commands into the 6 axis'
> needed for hexapod control?

EMC should currently be able to translate xyz commands
into six axes needed for hexapod control. This was
done using stepper motors to control cable lengths
instead of struts. I'm not sure what would happen if
you tried servo motors instead of steppers.

This is only any advantage to non-orthogonal machines
since you currently can't get any orientation change
in the motion planner and additional axes beyond 3 for
orthogonal machines are only useful for orientation
changes.

To get it working you would need to recompile the EMC
code using hexapod kinematics (which are currently
included in the EMC distribution). This would involve
replacing genhexkins.c with trivkins.c in the emcmot
Makefile. You would also need to define some hexapod
kinematic paramaters in the header file genhexkins.h.
Also make sure that this header file is included in
the makefile.

If anyone is interested in this code I can go into
more detail about it. I don't want to give any advice
on it right now since it has been a few months since
I've looked at it. There are also still a few
problems with the forward kinematics that should be
fixed.

Oh, you would also need to change the ini-file
paramaters to include 6 axes.

Brian