Coordinate Clarification

I have been working with CNC for awhile now... starting to may my own custom panels, and even doing math functions and special probe functions.

But... I need a bit of clarification...

I definitely understand the X, Y, and Z axis in three dimensional space....

And I understand that A revolves about X, B revolves about Y, and C revolves about Z. I even built an A-Axis for my mill and use it just fine.

But...

Can someone please explain the U, V, and W axis???

I can't seem to find them defined anywhere.

Thanks,
Jerry

U, V, and W generally are considered parallel "extra" axis to X, Y, and Z respectively But there is no hard and fast convention to it, and they can be and are re-purposed for what ever suits a particular machine. A couple of examples of conventional uses, would be a knee and quill, on a mill being set up as W and Z (axis in series or additive), or it could be Z and W as 2 parallel routers, or a twin table machine with a Y and V for each table. I have a non-conventional machine, a gang router with 4 parallel routers set up as U, V, W, and Z.

Ah... they may come into play with a friend of mine... he is building a mill that will have a standard X/Y/Z... but then have an extra gantry with basically an X2/Y2 because he will string a hot wire across to cut foam for aircraft model wings.

Not sure exactly how we are going to configure that in LinuxCNC... I suppose I'll be online quite a bit.

their is a sample config for 4 axis as per a foam cutter , with xyz uvw etc
or see the nine axis and remove the axis you dont need

also this thread
linuxcnc.org/hardy/index.php/italian/for...xyuv-foam-cutter-sim

Where are these sample located? Are they part of the LinuxCNC distribution, or downloadable from the web?
I'll take a look at it,,, but that makes sense now...

X - A - U
Y - B - V
Z - C - W

Complementary Pairs... (X / U), (Y / V), (Z / W) with the rotational groups A, B C revolving about the primary axis.

I did a search on "FOAM" for the entire file system... and I did not find that anywhere.

I searched "SIM" and found "usr/share/doc/linuxcnc/examples/sample-configs" which has a LOT of data I didn't know existed... so that's really cool.... but not seeing any mention of "foam" in the list. (I found PUMA and PUMA 560... which I also have... so that's another whole can-of-worms to deal with...)

I did fine these... "usr/share/doc/linuxcnc/examples/sample-configs/sim/axis" which I think is the directory you are referring to... but the only files with the prefix "axis" in them are as follows...

• axis.ini
• axis_9axis.ini
• axis_manualtoolchange.hal
• axis_mm.ini

But no reference to foam.

looking at the axis_9axis.ini file... this would probably do it... likely weed out the A / B / C / W axis information... that would leave the proper axis definitions... wow... lots of stuff to digest here... that's for sure. I'll create a BOGUS mill and start tinkering... hopefully by the time he gets the hardware going I'll have the configuration finished. (Grin)

Thanks,
Jerry

Ah... I'll go look in the shop PC... it has a newer version.

The one up here is an older machine... no DVD drive... just a CD... and (at least at the time) the only DC download was the 2.5 version. I also can't seem to get this thing to talk to the internet via the USB WiFi adapter... so I need to string a 60 foot LAN cable across the floor.

I may do that anyway.

I also found there are differences in how STEPCONFIG does setup between the two versions... having to do with where it installs some of the net commands and such. The last month has been a real learning curve... but I think it's going well. Just got all my axis to do auto-home with magnetic sensors (doing a video now), and I have a decent panel build going too.

RE: linuxcnc.org/linuxcnc/index.php/english/...rience-pyvcp-machine

But anyway... I'll go look for the foam configuration on the other machine for now... and get the LAN cable possibly tonight to get this machine updated.

Thanks again!
Jerry