I’m working on shrinking a MPCNC I bought off FB Marketplace - it’s spectacularly huge, but doesn’t fit in the shop. To make it fit, the X axis should be the size of my current Y axis, and I’ve cut some new, even shorter, rails for the Y.
Now, it’s time to disassemble/reassemble.
Before I pull all my rails, I got to thinking: since my Y axis rails are moving to the X axis, can I just turn the whole machine 90° (and flip the connectors on the board), so I only have to swap two rails (and a gantry), instead of all 4?
Or to put it another way: does it matter which axis is X and Y? Moving everything around isnt a huge deal, but I’m all for doing the easiest thing!
The right hand rule…that positive values are to the right? Definitely. Although I figure if end up wrestling with that, I can just swap the orientation of the plugs on the board, right?
My spindle is the Dewalt DW660, which is DEFINITELY offset from the center of the two gantrys–right now, if I zero it out at the minimum X/Y, there’s no gantrys between me (standing in the front/middle of the machine) and the spindle itself. But if I turned it, I’d end up with at least one gantry between me and the spindle–I’m trying to imagine if that’s going to be super annoying (while setting WC zero, changing bits, etc)
I attached an image explaining the right hand rule. Each of those directions are positive. It shouldn’t matter how you rotate your hand or the machine as long as in the end you wire it to follow that convention. Normally the x-axis points to your right and the y-axis points away from you (think rotating that hand 90⁰ clockwise so the index points right). If you don’t use this convention (e.g. switch X and Y), it’s not like anything inherently bad will happen, but parts will come out mirrored in some way.
As far as the orientation of the machine itself, it shouldn’t matter in the slightest.
