4th Axis Turnings

Special Interest Groups CNC Milling
#1

Don’t forget, we are holding monthly CNC SIG meetings the second Saturday of each month at 10:00 AM via Zoom. AND, by the way, that is this Saturday, June 13th, at 10:00.

Lou Adzima will be showing us what he has been doing on his 5 Axis CNC. He has been working on the 4th axis turning some walking sticks and french rolling pins. Along the way he has learned a lot about using that 4th axis and about various software packages he is using to design and drive his CNC. You won’t want to miss it.

If you haven’t signed up yet, you can do that here.

Hope to see you there!

-e

#2

Your timing is impeccable. I put a new controller board on my 3040T CNC yesterday and found out one of the main differences is that it supports 6 axis while default GRBL only support 3. So of course I had to test my rotary attachment(4th axis).

Unfortunately I spent the better part of today trying to figure out why it wasn’t working. It’s not good. My main driver board in the 3040T is sending Step and Direction signals up to the add-on driver board but the enable signal is not working getting sent up. Now it’s time to pull the main controller board and see if I can trace the signal and fix it. BEFORE SATURDAY! :wink:

#3

Good luck on the fix, and keep us posted. I look forward to hearing more about your setup!

‘See’ you on Saturday.

-e

#4

Success! Turned out to be the fact that I’m controlling the machine with a 3.3V controller( wireless ESP32 ) and the add-on driver board gets 5.3V on the control side. Signals from the controller are 3.3V to 0V and the 0V part works fine, the 3.3V and 5.3V means 2V of difference through some opto-isolators(LED diode) and 2V will keep the diode on… I cheated and put a diode inline with the input 5.3V so dropping that to 4.6V and now the opto-isolator can turn off.

Now to figure out the GRBL settings and look for software to create toolpaths for the 4th axis. With the 3040T I should be able to make very nice looking chopsticks and toothpicks.

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#5

0V part works fine

Cool. :joy:

#6

Doug,

When it comes to fourth axis design and toolpaths, two people who do this with agility are Ian Martin and Lou Adzima. They do it on beefy machines but the logic should be the same. They could answer questions.

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