Stepper Configuration Wizard - Axis Configuration

In the Stepper Configuration Wizard I've arrived at the setting up the axis section. What wasn't clear to me (Due to lack of labels next to it, nor was it detailed in the documentation) was the 2nd half of the screen. The top all has labels and was easy to follow, but with the "Home Location" and "Table Travel" what values go in here? More specifically what measurement is the Table Travel? Is it in mm/inches depending on the setting you chose or is this some other measurement? I'm assuming the Home location is whichever end you want the spindle to rest at so you'd put in 0, or %max% or even the middle value (if you want it to be centered) of the Table Travel field?

Edit: Also slightly off the original topic but still related to Stepconf wizard, how do you choose what GUI you want? I manually edited the .ini file that the wizard created to change GUI to gmoccapy but it didn't seem to work properly. I could job and enable/disable the system, but couldn't run any commands, load files etc.

inches or mm goes in the home and table travel entries, depending if you selected inches or mm for machine units.

Table travel sets where the machine origin is and the length of the travel on each side of the origin.

eg if you have a 8 inch TOTAL travel and want the origin in the middle you would set it:
-4 to 4

eg if you want the origin at the negative limit set it as so:
0 to 8


Home location is where the axis will move to after it has finished the homing routine.
if you set it to zero then:

in the first example the axis will stop in the middle
in the second it will stop by the negative limit

Chris M

Currently stepconf doesn't allow you to select different GUIs.
Each GUI has specific requirements for it to function properly.

The manual should have the info about what Gmoccapy requires (besides changing the DISPLAY= setting)

Chris M

Thanks for clearing up the measurement for me, I'm not sure why the wizard wouldn't say mm/inches next to the field like it does with the other values, it could make it confusing to us newbies!

cmorley wrote:

Home location is where the axis will move to after it has finished the homing routine.

Does this affect the way the machine works or where it mills from or is it purely for a practical sense so that it doesn't get in the way when changing tools, material etc.?

cmorley wrote:

Currently stepconf doesn't allow you to select different GUIs.
Each GUI has specific requirements for it to function properly.

The manual should have the info about what Gmoccapy requires (besides changing the DISPLAY= setting)

I was hoping it was going to be easier than that, like drop in the ini file created from stepconf wizard or something into the sim setup. I've found the guide for gmoccapy so I'll work through it until I get it working. Hopefully it'll be easy to go from gmoccapy with 3 axis to 4 when I add that functionality to my mill.

Home location does not effect the general movements of the machine - it is only moved there after homing.
One might use this feature purposely, to move a homed axis to a specific location so when homing the next axis, it doesn't hit anything.

The origin position, in most cases, does not affect the general movements of the machine either.
There may be some specific reasons to locate it in a specific spot but none that I can think of at the moment.

I tried building a simulated XYZA config with stepconf (linuxcnc 2.7) and then changing the display to Gmoccapy.
It seemed to work, though I didn't exercise much.
It you try to add a pyvcp panel it won't work - it won't even load.

If you figure out the things that need to be changed I may try to add gmoccapy to stepconf sooner rather then later.
(It's on my todo list)

Chris M

cmorley wrote:

If you figure out the things that need to be changed I may try to add gmoccapy to stepconf sooner rather then later.

The thing that needs to be changed is the user
Although admittedly I am a newbie to this so I don't feel too bad about missing this...
The issue was...I didn't home the axis first. I couldn't get any of the buttons enabled (Axis lets you go to the MDI page so I thought it was a config issue) until after I homed it. After homing EVERYTHING worked fine. All I had to do was change DISPLAY = axis to DISPLAY = gmoccapy from the generated stepconf config and it worked.

I am using a 5 axis breakout board and I when I setup my config. wiz. my machine locks up. I am really frustrated at this point. I am using a athlon system with sunix parallel port pci card. I am wondering if I should blow the system out and reload. Any help I can get is greatly appreciated. I would love to have someone to talk to.

When hal or pest try to access the parallel port, the machine will lock up. I am using a SYBA parallel port card and I could get a para. port zip drive to work on it. But when I try to get the breakout to function/blink lights, the machine locks up. I am using ubuntu 10.4 and a 5 axis breakout board that looks exactly like the Nextrox board that I cannot find now. This is really exasperating.

Assuming you don't have bad parallel port or motherboard hardware,
you can get a hang if you set the base thread rate too high
stepconf sets the base thread rate to 1/(2*max jitter)

What number did you set in the "Base Period Maximum Jitter" field?