LinuxCNC Gantry Robot System

A large high-precision 3-axis gantry robot system using LinuxCNC, integrated with Mesa Electronics interface cards and igus® dryve D1 motor controllers.

The system was developed from our LinuxCNC motor control testbed, which ensured the main components of the system were able to work reliably.

The system includes a custom calibration solution that leverages an existing OptiTrack motion capture system in the installation room to measure and compensate for errors in the gantry movement. Using this solution the gantry robot can achieve sub-centimeter precision across the entire work envelope.

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Copyright © 2000-2022 LinuxCNC.org
Copyright © 2025 Tomás Domínguez Bolaño, Valentín Barral Vales, Carlos José Escudero Cascón, and José Antonio García Naya.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.

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This work has been supported by grant PID2022-137099NB-C42 (MADDIE) and by project TED2021-130240B-I00 (IVRY) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR.

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Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1. LinuxCNC
  • 1.2. System Hardware
  • 1.3. Calibration System
• 2. igus® dryve D1 Controllers
  • 2.1. “Start” Page
  • 2.2. “Motor” Page
  • 2.3. “Axis” Page
  • 2.4. “Communication” Page
  • 2.5. “Inputs/Outputs” Page
  • 2.6. “Drive Profile” Page
  • 2.7. “Oscilloscope” Page
• 3. LinuxCNC
  • 3.1. Installation
  • 3.2. System Latency Analysis
  • 3.3. System Latency Tuning
  • 3.4. MESA 7I96S Board Configuration
  • 3.5. MESA 7I77 Board Configuration
  • 3.6. Introduction to LinuxCNC
  • 3.7. Basic LinuxCNC Usage
  • 3.8. LinuxCNC Configuration
• 4. Error Analysis and Calibration
  • 4.1. Installation and Basic Usage
  • 4.2. Data and Calibration
  • 4.3. Usage
• 5. calibxyzkins - Calibrated XYZ Kinematics Module for LinuxCNC
  • 5.1. Coordinate Transformation
  • 5.2. Installation
  • 5.3. Module Parameters
  • 5.4. HAL Parameters
  • 5.5. HAL Pins
  • 5.6. Inverse Kinematics
  • 5.7. Debugging

• GNU Free Documentation License
• Bibliography