X-50 (Mounted Vertical) Y-Axis Position Holding Issue

Hey Daniel,

you can set any motor to “reverse” on its MOTOR page. You can also assign any of the stepper motors to “X” or “Y”.

There are two options on how to have home on lower left when wall-mounted:

  1. The first is to assign the axes rotated by 90°. This way you can make that home is on lower left, by setting motor 0 to “Y”, motor 1 to “X” and “reverse”, and motor 2 to “X (slave)” and “reverse”. Note that if you do this with a Journeyman (120 x 80 cm, 48" x 32"), you will then have a 80 x 120 cm, 32" x 48" machine instead, with two horizontal X rails of 816 mm ‘max-soft-limit’ (of which one is X slave) and one vertical Y rail of 1220 mm ‘max-soft-limit’. See image 2 below.

  2. Alternatively, you can also leave the geometry as it is (but X is vertical then and Y rails are horizontal) and only set the machine origin (X=0, Y=0) to what seems to be lower left but in the machine’s geometry would still be the rear left. In this case the Y coordinates would be all negative (−816 mm to 0), just as the Z coordinates are already always negative (−133 mm to 0) on the Onefinity, since Z home is at topmost position. See image 3 below.

    Negative coordinates are common in the industry, as on vertical milling centers (VMCs) usually the machine origin is at right rear top corner, because that’s where usually the revolver or chain tool magazine is, so all three axes are only negative coordinates. This is because a CNC is always based on a right-hand cartesian coordinate system where coordinates increase to right, rear and top direction, and decrease in left, front and bottom direction. See here for explanation.

    If you have difficulties to imagine the latter, imagine you drive the X gantry to the rearmost Y position, and then please realize that at the rear left, this is the home position you mean if you put the machine to the wall. In the recommended position, the machine will be rotated so that X axis is vertical and Y axes are horizontal. So if you want X=0, Y=0 to be on what seems to be the lower left from your point of view then, this will still be the rear left Y position. And if you want this to be Y=0, then it is clear that the frontmost position of the Y axis will then seem to be at the bottom right from your point of view, but will have the value −816 mm, because Y values always increase from front to rear. 0 is then the biggest value on this axis, just like topmost Z is also 0 and the biggest value on its axis. The Y front to rear rail seems to be horizontal now, so looks like it goes from left to right, but Y axis is still front to rear, seen from the machine’s point of view.

A third solution would be to wall-mount the machine in the orientation that is not the recommended one, and put it on the wall with the X axis remaining horizontal. You can find a few people on the web or in this forum who mounted it this way, e.g. the original poster of this thread. This way not only home stays where it is, but wood dust and chips that are not drawn by dust collection will not fall on the lower Y ball screw. Note that in this orientation, the milling motor (router or spindle) would be under the X rails, which will make tool change not easy, so in this orientation, I would mount the X axis reversed so that the milling motor sits on top of the X rails, for easy access to the collet. You could also simply mount the whole assembled machine and QCW reversed, it depends on where you want to have the stepper motors. You can choose to flip any axis and then set the corresponding motor on “reverse”.

The drag chain on X axis is on the opposite side than the router, and on the Y axes, the drag chain is on the opposite Y axis than where the X stepper is. Depending on where you place the cnc controller, you may need stepper cable extensions (available on the “accessories” page).

By the way, home should always be on a bottom end, because if it’s on a top end, stall homing does not work against gravity.

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