2 Axis Motion at Last, Plasma machine

I finally have my 2 axis gantry moving. It's not cutting metal yet but I
thought this might be useful for those in the design stages of a similar
machine.

Driven by 1/5" pitch 3/8 wide timing belts, dual driven with single motor on
x
x axis motor: 200 ozin SloSyn, 200 steps/rev
y axis motor: 150 ozin SloSyn, 200 steps/rev
x and y axis travel 1" per motor rev
step resolution: .0005 with Gecko G201 10 microstep drives
Max travel: x 125", y 52"
Max velocity: 500 IPM (starts loosing steps at about 550, stalls at 600)
Software: EMC running freqmod on a 266 Pentium.

Now if I could only get EMC to switch a bit for spindle start to turn the
plasma on......

Using bridgeportio and IO_Show I can
see the e-stop bit toggle but can't get any response to spindle start,
coolant, mist etc. Using minimillio I don't even see the e-stop bit toggle.

The EMC is the BDI 2.04

Thanks,
Terry