[WIP] Support for up to LINEAR_AXES 9

[DerAndere1]

Description

This is early work in progress towards support for up to ten (EDIT: 9) non-extruder axes. No inverse kinematics are included. Like my previous 6-axis-support, the new code is Mostly framed by ´#if LINEAR_AXES >= ... #endif` preprocessor directives.

Contributors: Paloky, HendrikJan-5D, DerAndere, thinkyhead

TODO:

• Review and clean-up
• Test compilation
• Add sanity checks
• quick hardware test with LINEAR_AXES 9
• Thorough hardware test with LINEAR_AXES >= 7
• documentation for users

Requirements

LINEAR_AXES 9

Benefits

Extends multi-axis support to up to 10 (EDIT: 9) axes that benefit from endstops and auto homing. Axis names can be configured (Internal axis names are X,Y,Z,I,J,K,U,V,W). The extra axes are not so useful out of the box because inverse kinematics are missing, but this work can be used as the basis to develop multi axis machines. So far, the extra axes were used to control additional steppers that are not involved in positioning of the main tool.

Configurations

7axis_configs.zip

9axis_configs.zip

Related Issues

#22488

[ellensp]

this is getting absurd....

[DerAndere1]

TODO: LINEAR_AXIS >=7 with SAFE_HOMING, IMPROVED_HOMING_RELIABILITY, SENSORLESS_HOMING, QUICK_HOMING

[DerAndere1]

I know, @ellensp :D But I I obtained the code and wanted to present it here. I do not recommend to merge this, as the maintainability suffers, even with the latest refactorings.

[thinkyhead]

I think strings that contain axis names will need to get the lcd_put_u8str_ind_P treatment, so the @ character will stand in for the axis name, similar to how =, ~, and * are now used as placeholders for 1-based index, 0-based index, and indexed-E. That will reduce each set of 10 strings down to just one string.

[DerAndere1]

Axis renaming to UVW is done. Also, SENSORLESS_HOMING, M217 and M907 now support LINEAR_AXES 9.

Now, there is a request to add a new option like `#define SAFE_BED_LEVELING_START_[XYZIJKUVW]...

EDIT: I added the requested feature to this PR because it is necessary for some machines with LINEAR_AXES >= 4. Now we have in Configuration_adv,h:

/**
 * Safe bed leveling start coordinates. If enabled, the respective axis is moved to the specified position at the beginning of the bed leveling procedure.
 * Required e.g. with LINEAR_AXES >= 4, to position the Z probe perpendicular to the bed.
 * Values must be chosen so that the bed is oriented horizontally and so that the Z-probe is oriented vertically.
 */
//#define SAFE_BED_LEVELING_START_X 0.0
//#define SAFE_BED_LEVELING_START_Y 0.0
//#define SAFE_BED_LEVELING_START_Z 0.0
//#define SAFE_BED_LEVELING_START_I 0.0
//#define SAFE_BED_LEVELING_START_J 0.0
//#define SAFE_BED_LEVELING_START_K 0.0
//#define SAFE_BED_LEVELING_START_U 0.0
//#define SAFE_BED_LEVELING_START_V 0.0
//#define SAFE_BED_LEVELING_START_W 0.0

[DerAndere1]

This was sucessfully tested by HendrikJan-5D in hardware, including a full 7-axis print using a handwritten gcode script. I opened a new PR that superseeds this PR: #23112 (no new features, just a fresh rebase)