I’m wondering if support for multiple external steppers has been addressed yet, only post I could find searching was 3 years old.
In what sense?
The steppers are controlled by the laser / firmware usually. LightBurn doesn’t control any stepper directly. You can connect as many steppers as you like / your mainboard provides and use them. As long as there are sufficient gcode commands to control them, it’s no problem.
Yes, my main board will drive two external steppers, but lightburn will only send commands for one external stepper (usually a rotary) I’ve got a large format table that has two steppers.
That doesn’t make sense. If you have two motors on the same axis, they should be driven in parallel. Usually, these are wired in parallel, if you have two external drivers, the control signal cables should be wired in parallel with one single source and output to two steppers.
No tool can move two axes in parallel via software commands. There is only one command available for each axis, not multiple.
They aren’t wired in parallel, the table has x and y axes and my board has two stepper outputs, when I was using ezcad I could run both steppers, unfortunately, ezcad being unstable it would crash too much, but lightburn only has support for 1 external stepper, Jason was saying back when galvo version was released that he was working on two, I was just wondering if it was done yet.
I still don’t understand, maybe. Of course there is two outputs for x and y respectively. And if you have two outputs for ONE axis, those are wired in parallel, internally. But maybe I still get it wrong.
But if you are running ezcad, it’s a glavo mechanics then?
The table works the same as a rotary, you still have your line spacing and split size, with a rotary the external stepper moves the surface under the lens to a new position along 1 axis, table does the same thing but along 2 axis.
I can still use my table, with a 300mm lens I can engrave an area 48” x12” , if I was able to use the y axis as well I would have an engravable area of 48” x 30”