Single Motor Y Axis

[EverydayDiesel]

Does anyone have any pictures of a single motor Y axis on a 4x8 or bigger table? Has anyone every attempted to do this?

[acourtjester]

Well because some look at the table X and Y axis orientated differently, I look at it like the attached drawing.
With that said I use a nema 34 rated about 900 oz in and drive both sides using a cross shaft and drive both sides with one motor.
I have built a few table that are 4 X 8 with the 8' as the X axis (you may call it Y).

axis direction.jpg

4X8 table for sale (1)a.jpg

[weldguy]

I have seen a few over the years and unless both sides are driven by the single motor via a jackshaft of some kind its not going to be flimsy on the far side and your accuracy and quality will be affected in a negative way, especially on thinner materials that demand higher speeds.

[acourtjester]

I have no problems These are 16 or 18 Ga steel. I miss read you post I use a Jackshaft shown in my other post

[EverydayDiesel]

Are there sync problems with running 2 separate motors? This seems like it would be problematic

[Rodw]

Are there sync problems with running 2 separate motors? This seems like it would be problematic

That really depends on your CNC controller. Linuxcnc is brilliant at this because it supports axes with multiple motors (joints in linuxcnc speak) and squares a gantry during the homing procedure. This has worked perfect for me for a few years now.

From what I've heard some other controllers do not do it so well and people try to run two motors from a single stepgen which is not a preferred method.

[robertspark]

Are there sync problems with running 2 separate motors? This seems like it would be problematic

I have not had a problem with Mach3, Mach4 or UCCNC as you just slave the 2nd motor / drive as a 2nd axis to the primary axis.

The only problem is if one motor / drive fails then its likely to rack the gantry when the other motor charges off and the failed motor does nothing.

Mach4 you can slave many motors to the primary axis (4 from 1 axis), it does not use up the slaved axis letters like Mach3 and UCCNC (eg X can have 4 motors assigned to it, and you can still use any of the other drive letters for other drive motors)

Mach3 and UCCNC you can only slave 1 axis to a primary axis, but you can slave 3 axis to 3 primary axis (eg: X+A, Y+B & Z+C, with X,Y&Z being the primary axis letters and A,B&C being the secondary axis letters and any secondary axis letter can be tied to any primary axis letter)

All it is, is just a second pulse train through another pin / port on the microcontroller or FPGA of the motion controller. But pulse trains are in sync with each other and the direction pins toggle in sync when both motors change direction.

Mach3, UCCNC and Mach4 all have a means to square an axis but they require two homing inputs on different input pins, one for each motor / axis so that the motion controller knows which homing switch was tripped first and therefore which motor / step pulse train to stop moving first.