multiple (four) parallel axis

Andy, beat me but had similar ideas.

Todd Zuercher wrote: Andy, beat me but had similar ideas.

But your UVW as offsets idea is better than what I had in mind. It allows the operator to jog the individual tips.

I would be tempted to set up a Vismach simulation of this machine to see how it worked out in practice. I think, for example, that you would need to add (U-X) to X as the offset to get the DRO display and touch-off to work, but would need to experiment to find out.

It is interesting to speculate that the distance between the Z-axis actuators will be one horse-width.
www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp

andypugh wrote: I would be tempted to set up a Vismach simulation of this machine

How much of a hurry are you in? I am very busy this week, but will have a lot of idle time in a hotel room in Detroit next week, and something like building a Vismach simulation might pass the time nicely.

Thank you for your posts! I will ask the team about your concept, it will definitely make the programming part easier. Anyway, we are kind of in a rush, as we have to submit the working machine next Friday (of course we have been working on the machine in parallel for a long time).

As far as I know we will need to move the tool tips (x1 and x4; x2 and x3) independently in some cases (when we use the machine in manual mode), so thanks for the idea!

pcsabi93 wrote: Anyway, we are kind of in a rush, as we have to submit the working machine next Friday

That's fairly short-notice. Would submitting a virtual machine suffice?

If you are prepared to write a custom kinematics file I think that might be simpler in the long term than doing everything in HAL.

Do you have any existing LinuxCNC experience?

I created a sample config including a Vismach model of how I imagine the machine looks.

You will see that jogging X Y or Z moves a pair of axes, and jogging U V or W jogs only 1.

If you MDI G18 then a G2 or G3 move you will get mirrored arcs on two tools, and if you select G19 you get the arc on a different pair of tools.

Note that it is shift-drag to rotate the Vismach viewport, right-drag to zoom.

A real machine would need a homing config and some other details, but this seems to prove the concept.