Probe Basic and Carousel ATC with Geneva and Stepper

yeah that delay is a bugger.. the drive should be enable constantly and just be looking for a direction voltage and step pulse stream. i would have the drive enabled anytime the the machine is on and not estopped. and have it sitting idle waiting for pulse command.

That's how it works for the MESA, but the MKS OSC stepgen board works a bit differently.

I think it's continuously sending pulses and just switches the drive by the enabled signal.

 


If I remove the EN wire, it just starts running.
Maybe disconnect the EN wire and just toggle the CLK wire with the on/off relay? (that's the pulse signal)

i think because the carousel comp stepgen output setup is a bit more daunting. at least i haven't found a bunch of folks using it. i think spumco is the only person i know running it

Probe basic was prepared to control a dumb motor FWD and REV just by two outputs.
I didn't know so I bought a stepper motor with gearbox and driver because at first I wasn't considering the geneva wheel.

Started out with the MESA stepgen but later on I thought might as well keep that for a future rotary axis, as the small PCB is 10 bucks + 2x a relay, so thats why I set it up like this.

For now I'll just accept the situation and carry on with the small delay, until I got the whole toolchange process sorted.

Im at the point now where the carousel extends, gets detected, spindle moves to clearance height, spindle unclamps the tool etc..
All 5 sensors are working, Carousel Home, Carousel Index, Carousel IN position, Carousel OUT position and the Spindle Tool Clamped and Tool Released sensors.

Now its time to program the final movements, placing and removing a tool from a pocket.
Will be a little different probably compared to other carousel toolchangers where the carousel moving in and out takes the tool from the spindle.

When no tool is loaded it has to move down, clamp the tool, moving to the right to take a tool from the pocket, carousel retract, spindle up again and resume.
Or with a loaded tool it has to move in front of the carousel, moving to the left into the pocket, unclamp, up, rotate to new tool, down again etc.

Should be fun, hopefully it won't get fooked. :-D