U Axis working on a 9 year old Rabbit

Thu Feb 10, 2022

Well I finally have the rotary working using the U axis instead of connecting and disconnecting the Y axis cable and dealing with changing the parameters back and forth.

I started this a year ago. I wanted to upgrade to Lightburn but it did not work with Lasercut and my Leetro MPC6535. So to fix that I bought a Ruida RDC6445G controller.

Got that wired up and working. Then I got Lightburn and I noticed people asking if it was possible to utilize the U axis in the Ruida. Well Marco Wong got together with ruida and they made a firmware patch that makes this all possible. RDC6445G-V15.01.22-LIB.upd

So I bought another Leadshine microstep driver, wired it in, put in a 4 pin connector for the rotary. Enabled the U axis in the Ruida and Lightburn and done.

So all I have to do to switch between the U and Y is check a box in Lightburn or RDworks. Set the origin over the top of your work.

Fri Feb 11, 2022

Interesting Dennis!

How would one go about and tell Lightburn the rotary is now controlled by the U axis and not the Y ?
Can you select that. Have received a rotary with the laser (1 year ago, but only have time to dive in it now)
Have it had connected once but didn't know if i could hot plug it in (while my Aeon Nova 13 should have a relay that switches when something gets plugged in, but was always cautious).

So interested to have it on a seperate stepper driver. Hope you can enlighten me ?

Fri Feb 11, 2022

As an aside to this topic... Marco Wong is from LightObject and along with being very knowledgeable is a very helpful person in my 5 years of working with him off and on. He appears to have some influence with Ruida as well.

Fri Feb 11, 2022

Dimitri Modderman wrote: Fri Feb 11, 2022 Interesting Dennis!

How would one go about and tell Lightburn the rotary is now controlled by the U axis and not the Y ?
Can you select that. Have received a rotary with the laser (1 year ago, but only have time to dive in it now)
Have it had connected once but didn't know if i could hot plug it in (while my Aeon Nova 13 should have a relay that switches when something gets plugged in, but was always cautious).

So interested to have it on a seperate stepper driver. Hope you can enlighten me ?

Have you seen this? https://lightburnsoftware.github.io/New ... Setup.html

To me having the additional U axis driver is worth it. I found a used Leadshine DM442 on ebay for $20 which is a match to my X and Y.

Fri Feb 11, 2022

Gene Uselman wrote: Fri Feb 11, 2022 As an aside to this topic... Marco Wong is from LightObject and along with being very knowledgeable is a very helpful person in my 5 years of working with him off and on. He appears to have some influence with Ruida as well.

Thanks to Marco for making this possible. The firmware he did is RDC6445G-V15.01.22-LIB.upd

Now I see there is a later version RDC6445G-V15.01.30-LIB but I am not sure if I want to try it just yet.
Here is what the notes says for it.

Revision Notes for Firmware Update for v 15.01.30 – This firmware is for RDC6445G controllers only.

1. optimize rotary function, user can select Y or U Axis to be rotary axis.
2. fixed the bug in power fault and restore function
3. optimized the encryption function
4. optimized the laser engraving function.