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Common Direction Pins, will it work?

PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2018 2:27 pm
by RoryD
I am considering the UC100 for a retrofit to a 3 axis CNC mill.

However, although each axis has its own pulse pin, they all share one direction pin. This generally negates all 3 axes being stepped simultaneously, unless the direction is the same, of course.

Can the UC100, combined with UCCNC or Mach4, support this shared direction pin architecture?

For example, will specifying the same direction pin for each axis lead to the software/hardware recognising when it may or may not pulse pins simultaneously?
Or, are they just pulse individually anyway?
Or, will it just not work?

I have read the user guide, but did not find an answer.

Thanks for your help

Re: Common Direction Pins, will it work?

PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2018 3:15 pm
by cncdrive
No, that will not work.
Theoritically it could work as how you described, if only one axis is moved one time or if the moved axes are always moving the same direction, but UCCNC and Mach does not have this functionality.

Re: Common Direction Pins, will it work?

PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2018 3:32 pm
by RoryD
OK, thank you for replying.
I was hoping the UC100 would plug straight into the back of the existing CNC Stepper Driver box supplied with the machine with no modification, which does use shared direction pins. It does work, the software and PC are old though.
I will examine it to see if I can seperate the direction lines, failing that, I'll have to use new stepper drivers.