Hi,
while Mach cannot do inverse kinematics, what Mach and a compatible motion controller can do is generate pulse streams for axis motors and
this it does very well.
If you wrote your own kinematic solver the you could use it to effectively 'feed Mach with Gcode' which would result in the motion controller producing
pulses for your drivers.
Gcode we are familiar with tends to be of the form:
G1 Xnnn Ymmm Zppp
which causes the machine to linearly interpolate from its current position to (nnn,mmm,ppp). We conventionally assume that the axes are mutually orthogonal,
ie X, Y, Z but they could be rotary axes just as well. With that understanding (nnn,mmm,ppp) would be the angular position rather than a cartesian position.
If your kinematic solver were to output a stream of angular positions then you could drive your robot arm.
I use Mach4 and am most familiar with it. The scripting language of Mach3 is called Cypress Enable and is a subset of Visual Basic and is a dogs breakfast. Mach4 uses
Lua, which has its challenges also but it blindingly fast and stable by comparison to VB. You could write a kinematic solver in Lua, which would in turn drive Mach4's core.
Note also you can write C code for Mach4, not that I have done so, so I can't give any details about how its done......but if you'd prefer to use C, and for a kinematic solver
I can well imagine C would be preferrable.
Are you up for a software challenge?
Craig