Can't get xyzx motors to work

ok, things are moving along but the confusion continues.

So, I'm able to move the gantry as a unit if:
1) I go to each axis and click on home. I don't have limit switches set yet (more on that in a sec)
2) I switch to world view. or go to MDI view. both require #1

ie, no homie, no movie.

fine. feels a bit clunky but whatever.


So now I've connected my limit switches I do this partially to keep my machine from breaking itself, but honestly, I don't know that it's strong enough to do that.

Now when I tell it to home, it wants to only move the one axis. now, my gantry has a fair amount of flexibility; one side can be off the other by an inch or two. (this is why I added the second motor)

But what if the gantry is a foot away from the limits. Am I supposed to let one side move that foot followed by the other?

To make things worse, I can't even use manual mode to get it close enough (see 1 and 2 above)



Surely this is not a unique situation. how do I tell it to home joint 0 and 1 together and make the appropriate adjustments to each. how do I manually move the gantry to "pretty close" so I don't have to wait forever for it to creep up on the limits?

What's the special sauce?


Miles

Ok, The homing sequence thing worked.

Still leaves me short of where I want to be though it's starting to be workable.

1) Andy: you mention that through logic in HAL one can get it to switch to world mode. Is this something you wish for or something you have. If the latter, please do share.

Honestly, I see the world view as a more logical default state.

I still have the issue that until I'm homed, I can really do anything.

2) is there a way to tell emc2 to just consider everything homed? something like setp axis.0.homed true (homed is on output unfortunately). This was I can manually guide the machine to close to homed followed by hitting the home button.

I guess I would ask why I must be homed before I'm "allowed" to use world view? I'm standing right in front of the machine. I know where each axis is. I would understand an override, perhaps, but as it is it just says, "nope"

Rather annoying behavior, so I'd appreciate any advice on this.


Either way I thank all those who have replied to this thread. I'm trying to avoid installing windows on this machine and using mach3. mach3 does work with this machine and is rather easy to configure. It's unfortunate that it's sucking up so much time making it this far. Assuming I arrive at a satisfactory configuration, I plan on taking some time to add a bunch of comments to the ini and hal files and posting them for the benefit of other newbies.

Miles