cnc foam cutter

hi guys ive made a hot wire foam cutter using ramps 1.4 i need some assistance with firmware to make all four axis independant
the system is connected and working on marlin with lcd screen sd card reader the idea is to utilse this by loading the g code to card and using system unhooked from pc ?
any help would be greatfull

Not sure I understood the question, but all axis XYZE are independent, as in one axis can be moved in any direction and by any amount, independent of the other 3 axis.

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Hi there yes I understand there all independent axis but the file settings for e ate not the same as the rest for a foam cutter it's basically two mirror axis x y on one side z a on the other but they all need to have single control ?

According to your post, you actually have two axis: X and Y, that you mirror to an extra Z and A. By "mirror" one would understand that the motors perform the exact motion as on the other side. Since XZ and YA pairs perform the exact same motion, you can connect them to the same driver to keep them synchronized (or breakout the step/dir signals to an extra driver).

A photo of the machine will probably clear things up.

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Yes they are mirrored but they will need to controled independently as they may have slight diff paths to run a diff speeds to

That is still doable with regular RepRap electronics, as they have control for at least 4 axis. If you are using Marlin, the axis will be called XYZE. All four of them can perform motions independent of each other. For instance:

G1 X100 Y100 Z100 E100
G1 X90 Y240 Z120 E15

In the example above, they moved in different directions and by different amounts.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2015 04:28PM by MPower.

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