I have an Arduino uno and a 4 axis driver shield.

General CNC CNC Routers
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I have an Arduino uno and a 4 axis driver shield. What would I need to install to make this thing run my foam cutter? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks Bruce

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GRBL

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Inventables.com. Easel is a good sender or you could use Universal G code sender. You can find GRBL on github. http://Inventables.com

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How does the foam cutter function. I guess you will need a couple or three stepper motors. Have you a rough idea of how it should function. Ie will the table/work move or the cutting head. Will it be a robot arm design so it can cut more than the x y…

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I hadn’t thought about a manual cutter. That would require some modifications. What kind of setup do you have?

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Have a look to jedicut and it’s plug in for uno , software dedicated for hot wire foam cutting

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@Curtis_Cummings missing/deleted image from Google+

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Thanks

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Hard to tell how big it is from the photos. I haven’t heard of eddy’s suggestion. But anything called “Jedi” has to be awesome. If you decide to go with GRBL then check out the Inventible’s forum. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.

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I can see that the stepper motors you use are nema23 stepper motors. You can’t move these motors with the drivers you have.

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In the arduino 4 axis shield you can install a4988 or drv8825 drivers and this driver can drain 2A and your motors need more.

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You should see the specification of your motors and check if 2A it’s enough.

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I was looking at the shield I purchased and it said grbl could only drive 3 axis with the 4 axis slaved.

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That’s correct. GRBL is limited to 3axis. I wire my duel Y motors together. I have several GRBL controllers. Some have a 4th terminal already slaved. And one you have to double up the motors. But all are three axis controllers.

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@Bruce_Hoover you don’t need more than 3 axis.

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I do need 4 independent axis. Most of my cuts are not the same on each end

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Here comes my lack of knowledge on foam cutting. Lol. I don’t understand that at all. But if you meet 4 separate axis then a GRBL driven machine is not your answer.

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Looking at your machine I don’t understand why you would need more than two axis. Are you saying that you need the two (“tower” lacking a better word) motors to be at separate heights from each other?