TTC450: No support for A axis with touchscreen firmware

[LavalL1]

Hello,

I own a TTC450 CNC and I’m shocked to discover that it’s impossible to activate the A axis using your official firmware, even though the machine is sold as a 4-axis CNC.

I’ve tested:

• Your official firmware (8M.H35.20230803.bin) via MKS ESP32 Tool
• GRBL ESP32 compiled with N_AXIS = 4
• Proper wiring and pin assignments

Results:

• The touchscreen only works with your firmware, but only supports 3 axes
• GRBL ESP32 enables the A axis, but disables the screen

How did you intend for the A axis to work on your own hardware?

• No 4-axis firmware is provided
• No touchscreen support in GRBL ESP32
• No clear documentation for screen protocol or pinout

I’m requesting:

• An official TTC450 firmware with 4-axis support
• Or full documentation to integrate the touchscreen with GRBL ESP32

Please respond quickly.
Laval

[MitchBradley]

Maybe you should ask TwoTrees for help. Grbl_ESP32 is open source software that was created by volunteers. It does not include any touchscreen support. The 4MB ESP32 modules that power most controllers do not have enough extra memory to run touchscreen firmware. Some vendors - MKS in particular - have created their own controllers with more memory, and have added their own proprietary touchscreen code that we have nothing to do with. I think I might have seen such code in some MKS Github repo, but I don't remember where it is. MKS and TwoTrees did not contribute to the Grbl_ESP32 development in any way, but we have spent countless uncompensated hours helping people with their hardware.

The Grbl_ESP32 developers stopped working on Grbl_ESP32 several years ago in favor of the greatly-improved version named FluidNC . FluidNC can replace Grbl_ESP32 in nearly all cases. It does not support those vendor-specific proprietary touchscreens, but it does include a documented protocol for connecting smart pendants via a serial connection. http://wiki.fluidnc.com/en/hardware/pendants_displays There are several such pendants running on various hardware, some created by the FluidNC developers and some by third parties. The pendant source code and interface libraries are Open Source.