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Some questions about Mach3
« on: March 19, 2013, 10:11:22 PM »
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

Offline Chaoticone

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Re: Some questions about Mach3
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2013, 11:35:35 PM »
He Gary, welcome to the forum!  That will be what we call a humm dinger.  :)

Quote
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?

Depends on your drives and how you wire them up.  Your break out board can have some bearing on this as well.

Quote
Is the best way to do this to create a profile for each machine type?


That would be a good way to go I think.

Brett
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