I am setting up a new system for an old engraving table. Using Mach3 thru ethernet smooth stepper to leadshine mx3660 and to steppers for x and y axis.

The z axis is a air actuated spindle by New Hermes for fine engraving.

I need to turn on a relay driven air valve solenoid when the z axis starts a plunge or downward motion and off when the z axis retracts. The action of the plunger is fast.

There is of course no z axis stepper motor. I just need a logic signal on an mx3660 output that corresponds to the direction a z axis stepper would move if there was one.

Is there any way to set up an initial line of code that would output this logic.. Logic high when z axis is plunging (down) and Logic low when z axis retracts (up) 

Logic polarity is of no concern. I can set that up with hardware.

I am most likely gong to use Vcarve to generate gcode but they do not have a solution for this so far.

Thanks

Mark

The Z Axis Direction signal will toggle between the High and Low state dependant on axis direction movement. The signal is persistent and retains it's state until changed.

Tweakie.

Hi Tweakie.

Thanks for the reply.

Yes I understand that it is a steady state High and Low dependent on direction.

Researching this more yesterday, I came up with this..

Ethernet Smooth Stepper puts out Z axis Move Pulses on pin 6 and Direction on Pin 7

I want to access that Pin 7 signal.

I thought I might do it in hardware with a DB25 male to female with breakout and jump pin 7 to the Pin 9 which would give me that direction signal on the MX3660 CN7 digital output 4

I might have to break the normal/ circuit trace from the pin 9 of the input DB25 to avoid conflict.

I am checking with Warp9 to make sure that Z Axis Direction pin 7 can feed 2 input without loading. It should.

Then I got to looking at Mach 4 and the ESS setup. There is a new feature where you can assign Output signals to multiple pins.

This is done on the ESS Configuration App and Output Signals tab.

So I am hopefull that I can just send the Z Axis direction to Pin 7 as is normal and to Pin 9 to feed the MX3660 digital out 4

So I am hopefull that I can just send the Z Axis direction to Pin 7 as is normal and to Pin 9 to feed the MX3660 digital out 4

Looks good.

Tweakie.

For others that follow, there is more information on the Warp9 forum. https://www.warp9td.com/index.php/kunena/7-general-discussion/8448-ess-mapping-outputs-with-mac4#24748

Tweakie.