Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] 2 Axis Motion at Last, Plasma machine

"Toddy, Terry L CUBA" wrote:

> 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.

This should work. Do you have 2 parallel ports? generally, you need this
for steppermod and freqmod. The step pulses come from one parallel
port, and the auxilliary I/O (spindle, coolant, etc.) comes from the
other.

You have to specify different parallel port addresses for the two ports
in the .ini file.

I just found out that the M03 command won't start the spindle unless there
is an S word (ie. S1000) in the same block. Try the F9 and F10 keys also. Do these
keys cause the screen display to show spindle running?

Jon