That homing routine is brilliant Bob - got to get this working on my own machine! The vid is great, thanks for sharing it, fills in the blanks very nicely.

Can I ask what kind of motors, and what voltage power supply you use?

Sandy Noble

Champion, thanks. So you get decent torque from the the motors running on a 5v supply? I'd have thought you'd need higher for a non-counterweighty system. Perhaps my motors are just wusses!

sn

Don't blame you, it's not complex in itself, but it just needs more care, it's less general-purpose. More stuff to go wrong. The reason for it is for positional accuracy, but this could be got by using big enough diameter spools too. The down-side to using spools is the change in drum diameter when the thread layers-up. The change in diameter is particularly significant on very small spools. You know, this was a problem for me on my first machine when I was using sewing bobbins and a pulley-type system where the thread ran through an eyelet on the gondola, and then back to an anchor point near the spool. So it had to reel in twice as much thread as a single line's-worth for any particular move. I'm quite jealous of the simplicity of the thready, spooly machines, so I'm definitely going to look to that in the future, and I don't see why the standard sprockets couldn't also be used for it.. I was asking about the voltage because I know it'll need a lot more _grip_ to bear the full weight of the gondola. On the other hand, it'll have a lot more traction on the spool. Hm!