XY motors running well, but UV motors not at all

Dear Forum

I had a great breakthrough this morning, merging what I could from the foam-sim in axis 2.6 with the hardware settings I've managed to extract through a length process involving Stepconf. (Stepconf no longer works... but the settings work perfectly in Axis and seeing as I am trying to make an XYUV machine which Stepconf doesn't understand, I have all but abandoned it (Stepconf) and am proceeding with hand-coded configs.

However, whilst my XY gantry works PERFECTLY (yes, spot-on!) from Axis, my UV one doesn't budge. The only error appearing says "Joint 6 following error" when I try to jog U and "Joint 7 following error" when I try to jog V. This makes a sort of sense to me, given that I have configured U onto AXIS_6 and V onto AXIS_7 in the HAL file.

I'm sure this is a pretty simple fix (is it?) for someone who understand the configs better than I do. I'm familiar with writing software from scratch, but I get a bit lost in the new words and structures in these configs. May I ask a bit of help here? I've attached the files which I think are the right ones.

Once again, sorry to be a nuisance! It's oh, so tantalisingly close now! I can almost taste the melting foam!

Gareth

Hi

Just had a quick scan

net upos-cmd axis.2.motor-pos-cmd => stepgen.2.position-cmd
net upos-fb stepgen.2.position-fb => axis.2.motor-pos-fb
net ustep <= stepgen.2.step
net udir <= stepgen.2.dir
net uenable axis.2.amp-enable-out => stepgen.2.enable

Have a look at your axis numbers, axis.2 is Z whether you have one or not, suspect you need to substitute 6 / 7 as appropriate.

regards

on your hal file change stepgen 2

net upos-cmd axis.6.motor-pos-cmd => stepgen.2.position-cmd
net upos-fb stepgen.2.position-fb => axis.6.motor-pos-fb

and stepgen 3
net vpos-cmd axis.7.motor-pos-cmd => stepgen.3.position-cmd
net vpos-fb stepgen.3.position-fb => axis.7.motor-pos-fb

also check your file endings that the files are Unix and not windows

Great call!

That, gentlemen, was all that was required to move my four motors independently and accurately! I'm very excited - this is my first LinuxCNC project and with such amazing support via the forum and such a great software product, I can see myself building more and more machines!

Thank-you so much! I've been borderline going crazy with this thing for the last week, but now I'm in a great position to finish the housing and add the limit switches. I should be cutting foam really soon now!

All the best,

Gareth

your welcome Gareth , keep updated with progress , and don't worry if you come to a dead end , and before you become crazy ! Post a question it's safer ..

Thanks so much for the support!

Some pics so far - some ugly, some quaint:

1) The driver board:

I'm using a 400W ATX PC power supply, with the green wire grounded so it stays on. The big LED is wired (via a 680 ohm resistor) between the 3.3V (orange) wire and ground. This is to let me know it's on; I accidentally left it on overnight once - HOT motors in the morning! The motors are all powered off the 5V rail which pushes lots of current and they seem to do fine with this. The big relay on the left switches the tool (in this case the hotwire) on and off and is in turn switched by a small relay and a BC107 resistor so that I can assign it to a bit on the parallel port later.

2) My actual machine, one side:

I cut the ply on another CNC machine so that the bearings line up perfectly for the horisontal leadscrew. The vertical leadscrews are made from recycled parts from the machinery of an electron microscope which was being retired.

3) Both sides of my machine:

Obviously, these two parts will face each other. I made them separate so that I can change the length of the wire and therefore the acuteness of the cutting edge.

4) Christian's clever trick for mounting the motors:

My friend Christian who owns the big CNC machine I mentioned in photo 2 is an absolute genius when it comes to making things. This is his nifty idea for mounting motors so that you can get them aligned AND change the angle at which the gears mesh until it's all perfect.

Well, I'm going to try wire it all up and run a test tomorrow. Here's hoping it goes well! Good night and thank-you so much to you all!

Gareth