Topics

1

General Mach Discussion / 4th axis

« on: December 01, 2010, 05:19:26 PM »

I want to build a 4th axis for my mill I would like to drive it with a ac servo motor. I'm running my machine with an AJAXCNC dc3io kit. It uses a mach3 plugin to run and it works well. I do not know how to add the 4th axis to my setup. Ajax offers a 1 axis expansion plc but it's for a brushed dc servo. I need to know if I can run ajaxcnc's plugin and also use a modbus device or something to run the 4th axis.

2

General Mach Discussion / Spindle Speed Encoder

« on: November 13, 2010, 07:22:20 PM »

I have a bridgeport R2E3 mill and it has an air driven motor that controls spindle speed so at this point i can't use closed loop feedback to control speed but I bought a cnc4pc index pulse card in hopes of using it to be able to use IPR feeding on the z for more accurate tapping. I'm controlling the machine with mach3 with an ajax cnc motion control card. I tried to hook the cnc4pc index card to pin 15 on my pc parallel port and connect it to mach3 through that access point in ports and pins but even though i've verified 5v and an output htz that moves with spindle speed( using a multi meter ). The onscreen led for inputs doesn't light up. Logically all I can think of is that since I'm using a motion control card that mach3 isn't letting me use the parallel port. HELP!!!! Please!!!