Hi there, I am planning on using the CNC electronics bundle to make a custom 2D gantry to move a camera around. The gantry is approximately 13 ft x 13 ft. Is there any limitation in the controller/included software that would limit the bed size? Thanks!
Only mechanical Things like How to calculate V-Slot® deflection, belt vibration and stretch, that sort of things are what you got to look out for
I remember a discussion on length limits for GRBL but google is failing to find it, was probably part of a text based discussion group that has disappeared.. There IS an axis length limit, dependent on the steps/mm and the size of the internal step counters. GRBL has to translate any movement command from inches/mm to 'steps to do'. My belt driven machine is set at 40 steps/mm and is 750mm on the Y axis. So end to end, from 0 to 750mm it would take 30000 steps, a number easily stored in a 2 byte signed integer and even easier in a 4 byte integer. A slightly longer axis of 820mm would exceed a 2 byte integer, which is why GRBL uses 4 byte integers. To exceed the 4byte int would take an axis of over 53million mm. So not a practical limit, really. (-: We can run into problems with very high resolution. If we use a low pitch leadscrew, say 2mm, and very high microstepping, say 256, and a reduction gearbox of say 40:1 we end up with 5120 steps/mm which gives us a length of ~419meters. This might be exceeded on a rotary axis doing long continuous rotations when pretending to be a lathe. So, not generally a practical limit but it does exist (-:
