I am building a multi-purpose machine and I have some questions about how Mach3 operates which will influence how I wire it. I have two milling/lathe spindles that are interchangeble. Once is DC motor driven, the other is stepper motor driven, and therefore positionable. I also have another stepper motor which is to be used for an extruder for 3D printing. I have a USB 4 axis breakout board. I intend on driving the stepper spindle and the extruder from seperate drives, but using the same step, enable, and direction signals, which are switched by a multipole relay.
My questions:
What powers up the stepper drives? Just enabling the E-stop circuit, or is there a standby mode where you can be programming and such but the drives are off?
I want to use the machine as a Vertical Mill, Horizontal Mill, Vertical Lathe, Horizontal Lathe, Shaper, Cutoff Saw, 4 axis robot with pneumatic gripper, and 3D printer. The vertical mill and the horizontal mill need to switch the Y and a Z axis. The lathe axis get switched around too. When I want to 3D print the A Axis signals need to go to the extruder etc. Is the best way to do this to create a profile for each machine type?
Thanks,
Gary H. Lucas