I bought a Black Box Controller, Is there a way for me to set up the black box to handle a rotary 4th axis? I have the 2 boards below I bought with the machine to set up a rotary Axis. Mach3 5 Axis STB5100 USB motion card TB6600-T4 4 Axis stepper motor driver board. I then purchased the Black Box Controller. Is there a way to set up the black box to handle a rotary Axis or am I wasting my time trying to make it happen?
BlackBox is functionally, at its heart, an 8-bit Arduino Uno working miracles it was never intended for. This version of grbl will never have 4th axis support. There's supposed to be Arduino Mega and ARM-based versions in the works, but the timeline on those has reached "length of string" territory, as far as I'm aware. Some people have forked versions (like grbl5X or whatever it's called, there are others too) that may be better, but I don't believe any of them would be able to run on an Uno- and therefore, BlackBox. You'd be better off buying Mach 3 at a discount now that it's been superceded by Mach 4 and running the breakout board that came with the machine. If you have a dual-Y motor machine, you need another driver for the rotary; it's not good practice to try and drive two motors off a single driver.
Contrary to the above, you actually can use the BlackBox to do rotary work: 1. Unplug you Y axis motors and lock the Y axis in place 2. Position your rotary positioned underneath your X gantry, center line lined up with center of router. 3. Plug your rotary positioner into theY axis port. 4. Run wrapped rotary GCODE: See Rotary Machining and Wrapping - VCarve Pro V9.0 User Manual
This is an A-Z-X live tool lathe though, not a 4th axis. There are still only three axes, except one of them is now rotary. To have a 4th axis as requested, you need three pre-existing axes.
Semantics pretty sure OP just wants to use a rotary, not full on 4th axes. Of course we all had to start out somewhere so the terms may end up being used interchangeably
When it sometimes takes me three or more rounds of Googling just to find the name of the thing I'm trying to look for, semantics is very important!
So with that in mind, is there a way to get both Y and Y2 axis connected in parrallel on the Blackbox without loosing too much A in power consumption? and Use one of the remaining like you mentioned for the Rotary Axis? Also, is there a plan on making a BlackBox version that would run 4 NEMA 34 motors? ( 6A each) Thanks
You disconnect the Y motors when you connect the rotary. You also need to clamp the Y in place so it doesn't move so it needs some hands-on anyway BlackBox is not intended for NEMA34s but if you choose suitable low inductance 3v coil NEMA34s they run just fine.
