I have read up on the Ruida 6445G U axis being inoperable with out some sort of mystic firmware needed to be specified prior to ordering… That’s a bummer… (anyone hear anything about that being available to try?)
But I did set up a separate U axis 541D driver on my build, and have my rotary working using the buttons on the jog panel. I figured I would use a 4PDT 24V relay to swap he controller Pulse/DIR pins between the U and X axis drivers on my control board, then do the changes in LB. Is there a tutorial on how that is done? (my Y axis is my scanning axis, and I did notice when I have the Ruida Rotary enabled the Y axis quits working properly, which I hope is just a misconfiguration.
You cannot use the U axis from the controller to drive the rotary unless you have the special firmware from Ruida for it. There is no other way. The Ruida always uses the X axis for scanning, and the Y axis for turning. Even on a system with the U axis firmware, X is scan, and it just sends the Y pulses through the U output instead.
So in my case, my rotary mounts in the Y direction, so I would need to flip the Rotary driver to the Y output and the Y to the X output… that explains the odd Y behavior when I enabled the rotary function!
Ok, so I’ll use a second 4PDT relay, so a single switch can reconfigure the Pulse/Dir pins around.
And retrain my brain on where the axis are
Thanks, that explains my issue with my Y.
Do I just save a separate Machine config of each use case then to keep all my movements and accels matching?
New LightBurn user as of today! I had the same question. Is there a way to identify the U axis version? My controller at least reports U axis functions on the display. I was going to throw another stepper driver in the machine to avoid having to unplug the Y axis every time, but if that’s not going to work, I won’t bother.
Do you know if there’s a common solution to that? I’m thinking a variation on Nick’s relay solution might be an option. I’m going to install a receptacle for the rotary axis in the work area and I could have the relay automatically switch over when it’s plugged in. Opening the side panel and fussing with pluggable terminal blocks every time is not a great solution.
Most Ruida controllers have a U axis, but it’s designated for a feeding table (basically a conveyor belt work area). I don’t know of a way to identify that special firmware version, but if you send a job to the rotary and the Y axis doesn’t move that would be a good indicator.
My own solution was to wire the step and direction pins from the controller to two motor drivers, but put the enable pins on a 3-pin toggle selector switch. You basically enable one motor and disable the other with the flip of a switch.
I thought of that, but my build is in landscape mode so I dubbed the short vertical axis Y so my head didn’t explode doing rotation/translation functions in my wee head.
My 3 ganged 4PDT relay design does the 3 way shell game for me with the Pulse/Dir and Endstop reconfig with a single on/off switch. I’m just waiting on Amazon to deliver them.
The advantage to my build, is that it keeps the X gantry motors alive as the U axis, allowing me to jog that axis from the keypad to put the scanning axis in the middle of my rotary if needed. An unintended bonus
Others that kept the Y axis as the longer horizontal motion in the original Y-1200 build from Furtger Fabrications can use the enable pin as you outlined.
Hmm, the enable switch idea sounds good. My machine had holes where the manual Z axis controls would go that I’ve already filled with (unused) switches from my switch assortment simply because I didn’t have any hole plugs of the right size. One of those could easily be the axis selector. Having it automatically switch when plugged in would be handy, but Nick’s got a good point - it’s useful when aligning the rotary axis with the X axis.
