Rotating XCarve 90' - keeping X and Y zero in lower left

X-Carve Assembly
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It’s been a long spring \ summer at work, and my intended vacation still hasn’t happened, so my XC has been sitting idle for a bit. Yet here I sit dreaming of upgrades…

I hope to get back to carving soon, but I’ve been considering with my ball-screw upgrade (which is stalled at the moment pending vacation) I would also like to rotate the XCarve 90’ counter-clockwise and adjust the size slightly - longer on the new X (previous Y) so I can use 4’ sheets, and slightly shorter on the new Y, (previous X) so it doesn’t hang over the bench. This way I can use 2x4 sheets of ply, since most of my current Y goes unused but I could use more X.

The trick however - is I still want to call the lower left corner the X,Y zero location, so here goes my dumb question…

I want the previous Y axis to become my X axis, and vice-versa. I know I’ll be facing a rail in this orientation, but based on the location in my garage (on a bench in the corner) it just works best. After I rotate the machine, how to I change the Arduino so that my X is now 2 motors and my Y is only the 1?

I know this is a silly question, but as I sit here thinking and searching the forum, I’m not seeing the answer, although I am sure it’s probably simple. I’m going to blame sleep deprivation :slight_smile:

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You could also just change the homing direction in your grbl settings if that would be enough?

If you are set on the idea though and are using the gshield you could just wire your Y motors to the X, and the X motor to the Y axis. I can’t see any difference between two motors sharing one driver Vs another on the gshield

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I have the x controller, so Y has two drivers…

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Ah ok. It was just because you mentioned Arduino in your post. I’m afraid I know nothing of the controller

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Theoretically, you could modify the GRBL port mapping and recompile a custom version of GRBL.

There is a “cpu_map.h” file in the GRBL source code. This is where it configures which Arduino output pin is which axis. You could swap everything that has to do with X and Y (STEP, DIRECTION, LIMIT, and probably the associated masks) and it might work.

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Get a sharpie.

Use some hieroglyphics to remind yourself.

X+ —>
Y+ —>

Done.

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