I need a little with a Galil setup here. Here's my situation:

I am switching a machine over from a proprietary front-end software to Mach3, but using the same Galil card and wiring the machine has always had. The machine works at this moment, with the old software, so it should be pretty straight forward to get this going. Here's what I need to know:

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QUESTION 1: Where do I tell mach3 what my encoder counts per inch are?

---The motor tuning dialog will not let me enter anything.
---There is nowhere in the plugin config where I can set it.
---I can only set the encoder units per rev for the spindle in there, but that setting doesn't apply to me.
---I called Galil's tech support, who told me they deal only with encoder counts, not real world units. They leave that to the front-end software. So where do I tell mach how many counts to use to go an inch, especially as it is different for my Z axis than my X axis?

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QUESTION 2: One of my axes has a slave. Axis 1 and Axis 4 (X and W or X and A) are slaved together. What is the best way to set that up? Do I do so through Galil commands in SmartTerm, in Mach3, or a combination of both?

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Thanks in advance for your help.


 

All of what you need to do is done in Mach.  These questions apply to setting up any motion device for Mach whether it be Galil or the Printer port, etc...

ANSWER 1. 

You need to enable the motors in Config->Ports and Pins.  Click on the motor outputs tab and enable all of your axis motors (x, y, z and a for your slaved axis). 
Now you will be able to input the counts per unit in the motor tuning dialog.

ANSWER 2.

Config->Slave Axis.  Then for the X axis, choose the A radio button.  Restart Mach.

Thanks very much. Should I leave the port and pin assignments alone when I enable the output ports?

My e-stop on my machine is wired into the Abort signal on the ICM-2900. What is the Port number and Bit number for that to enter on the Estop setting in the Ports and Pins dialog?

Abort is only brought to the Galil.  Meaning that it is not an input signal that get passed to Mach.  Simply jumper a wire from Abort to a general input of your choice and use that as your EStop in Mach.

Steve