Rotary axis setup with knee mill scale issue

[Fierobsessed]

Allin1DC (drive 2=X, drive 3=Y, drive 4=Z) + DC1 (drive 1=A) for the rotary
I finally got my rotary 4th axis setup and am adding it to my 3 axis Bridgeport clone, as I had always intended to do. However I'm running into a configuration issue.

I have this mill set up as a normal 3 axis X Y Z, Plus a scale on the knee (axis W) added to the 5th encoder port. I use axis summing to factor the knee height in, comes up as "ZW" axis label. I can change to a long tool, lower the table an arbitrary amount, hit go and it doesn't miss a beat with the tool/part heights. However, since summing is restricted to axes 1-4 only, I had to put the knee axis W as axis #4 and set parameter 75 to -400.0000. This got summing with the knee and Z quill working perfect and is how I've been using the machine in the past.

I tried to configure the new Rotary as axis 5. Every time I try to change the Axis letter on Axis 5 to anything other than "N" I get "Axis 5 Communication In Fault". Logically, it looks like an incorrect drive setup, however the P304, axis 5 drive is set to 1, which is the Rotarys drive, and the encoder P312 is set to 4, where the rotary's encoder is plugged in. Machine restarted and the issue persists.

After messing around and getting frustrated with trying to get the rotary working in the position of the 5th axis, I configured the Rotary as axis 4, and had it dialed in and working correctly. Axis W Scale still reports, but now summing cannot be configured.

Reports attached.

[Fierobsessed]

I got back to working on this today and got it all sorted out, albeit in an unconventional manor. Took a fair bit of trial and error but here's what I found; I worked off of the report where I had the 4th axis working correctly as axis 4 and attempted to get summing from Z to the Knee scale working from there, meaning that axes "XYZ" are 123, I have the Rotary as "A", 4th axis. 5th axis is the Knee scale. Drive Parameters 300-303 are 2(X), 3(Y), 4(Z), 1(A). Encoder parameters 308-313 are 1-6; XYZ, Rotary, Scale, Spindle.I kept the 5th axis label set to "N" to keep the machine from throwing communication errors.

I was experimenting with Summing Control, parameter 75. I found that although the manual explicitly states on page 339 that this function only works between Axes 1-4 for both Summed Axis and Axis to be summed with; This was found to not be entirely true. I tried entering "-500.0000" to set the "Summed Axis" Z and the "Axis to sum with" to 5th axis, the Knee Scale. This actually worked just fine. It was displaying the position as ZN, however moving the knee had no effect on the ZN position.

As noted earlier, changing the Axis letter on Axis 5 to anything other than "N" I still get "Axis 5 Communication In Fault", I found is that if I set the 5th Axis to "M" as a manual axis, it does not cause the communication error to show up anymore. Gave the machine a full restart. 4th axis and Knee to Z summing are now working!

[cncsnw]

You will need to change a few lines in your PLC program, to reflect your drive mapping.

That may be addressed in the newest factory PLC programs, which access drive communication by axis letter instead of drive number.