?

Hi Brian,

We can use the ESS if you like. The motion card to me is a little transparent (mach 4 is hardware agnostic). As long as we can support the reading of encoders we can make this work. If we did Ethercat I could look at the current and make it basically a Cobot. We could sense the current and kill motion and stop on quickly increased loads.? May be a bit much for what your looking to do but we really can do anything ;)? . Closed loop steppers and an ESS with the encoders going back to the ESS so we can see the position, I think is about as good as it is going to get for a minimal investment. You will be able to move the bot to position manually (you will need to make some sort of way to counterbalance the Z axis) and teach it positions . Jogging for a use case like this just to slow. I want to move to position and hold the head where I would like to weld and press a button to set the positions to weld . Simple and fast is what I am looking for. This may just be me, but when I pick up a welder and start working I am not in the mood to be a programmer. When I am in welding mode I pull out the C clamps and hammers ;) CNC machine should be as useful, if not... it's a fail!

?