I have a Sainsmart 3030 Prover and have just picked up the true 4th axis that was produced for it as well as a few other of their machines. The firmware on my machine does have values for $103, $123, and $133. The machine also has a 4th axis mode that can be enabled or disabled in the on-board controller screen.
I have been using gSender with this machine for a year now and love it. I even purchased the Auto Zero touch probe and wired it to work with this machine. I would love to be able to use it for 4th axis files as well and am hoping that this could be a simple fix to allow 4th axis on certain Grbl firmwares.
I have done a small amount of testing but haven’t had time to get more into it. If I choose grblHal as the firmware, the 4th axis selector shows up properly and allows me to spin the A axis. I haven’t tried running anything with grblHal selected as the firmware, so I don’t know if I could just run it like that and ignore the fact that I’m unable to edit firmware settings with the wrong firmware mode selected.
I have looked into flashing grblHal onto this controller board, but I don’t think that is going to be possible because Sainsmart doesn’t provide enough documentation about the board besides knowing it is an Arm 32 processor.
Would it be possible to run a firmware check to see if the A axis settings have values, and if they do allow the 4th axis to run with grbl firmware? I would also be open to any other suggestions. I can do any testing needed or provide any more information to help make this work if need be.
Thanks.
Edit: Forgot about one other thing. With the new gSender Edge and the way the firmware is being auto detected, I am going to be unable to switch the firmware mode back to grblHal when the Edge features are rolled into the main releases.
I hope that does what you were looking for, we got a couple pieces of feedback on it so we’re happy to finally have it in