Newbie questions... be gentle...

So I've decided I'm finally going to build a cmc machine and I figured why settle for small when I can go all out... well apparently thats not a good idea but never the less i'm going to try. I would like to build a 5 axis machine with XYZAB with AB moving the tool not the table. So step one, set up the software so I know what pins I'm going to need on the parallel port and what they are going to control or receive, this is my first snag. when I go in to the setup it only allows me to configure a 3 and 4 axis machine. I went online and read a bit about this then tried some different things out. I went in to the configuration files and manually added the 5th axis but the system didn't like that. I tried to edit the sample configuration files but they are not the same as an actual machine configuration. I have searched high and low on the net and in the manuals, perhaps I missed something but I need help.

My question is How can I setup a 5 axis machine?

I went in to the configuration files and manually added the 5th axis but the system didn't like that.

You need to attach the .ini and .hal files you made.
There is no magic to stepconf, it just produces basic configs for people who know nothing about Linuxcnc.

If you want to do anything more complicated, you need to edit by hand

regards

When I edited the configuration files yesterday and reran the program it said pins "blahblah" didn't exist or something like that. I'm sure I forgot to tie something but I'm not sure what...

And yes I am one of those people... hahaha

There is a 9 axis sample configuration included with Linuxcnc you can look at to get an idea of how to set things up.

Rick G

And this is a 5 axis sim, from 2.6.0~pre I think

Probably won't work as is but will give an idea about axis declarations etc

regards

ok, so now I've got everything showing up in the UI however I don't know exactly what options I have to send and receive the signals to and from the machine. I've seen in the configuration file the pins designated to the different functions but there are not enough to support all the signals I would like. Is there some way to configure this to have multiple signals on one line that would send it to a micro controller on the hardware to process the different signals?

Like I said before, I am a newbie and I'm trying to learn this from scratch. I'd like to know how this software runs so I know what I need to build in the circuitry to handle my needs.

I'm sorry for being a PITA...

if you are trying to communicate with a robot with it's original microcontroller and communicate with it over a serial link etc then linuxcnc is not what you need , however if you wish to strip the machine of it's controller and replace it with Linuxcnc , then yes you can do that .

can you clarify, what you are looking to do ,

muddbog wrote:

ok, so now I've got everything showing up in the UI however I don't know exactly what options I have to send and receive the signals to and from the machine. I've seen in the configuration file the pins designated to the different functions but there are not enough to support all the signals I would like. Is there some way to configure this to have multiple signals on one line that would send it to a micro controller on the hardware to process the different signals?

Like I said before, I am a newbie and I'm trying to learn this from scratch. I'd like to know how this software runs so I know what I need to build in the circuitry to handle my needs.

I'm sorry for being a PITA...

are you trying to use the parrell port only ? , as this will limit you to only a few pins , although you can fit a secondary parrell port card for more pins ,
however if you need quite a few , then you would need to move to fitting an additional interface such as the Mesa 5i25 / 5i20 which in some combinations can give you up to 96 pins

At first I was looking at using the parallel port but as you say I will be limited to the amount of I/O's I can use I would like to use USB.

FYI... I want to build all the circuit boards, I didn't want to have to buy them. I know its easy to buy them but I like the challenge...

Is there a thread out there to assist people in building the Controller and drivers? I have a good Idea of how i want the drivers to be.

also I heard that there was some problem with usb as far as the way Linuxcnc uses "realtime" but I could have misunderstood...

by the way thank you for everyones help. It's really nice when people are so willing to help a newbie like me...