2 axis, one belt - Festo Gantries

Hey guys, I have a feeling that this will have been explored here before, but my search didn't show anything up.

I've just had a Festo sales team out at my work, doing a bit of a showcase of their new products.
Although most of the stuff was boring PLC and pneumatic stuff, one thing that really caught my eye was their gantry systems.
[www.festo.com]

The basic premise is that the two (in this case servo) motors work in tandem to control the X & Y axis.
For instance, to get a linear motion in X or Y, both motors have to either work at the same speed, in the same direction, or the same speed in opposite directions.
to move at 45 degrees, one motor moves while the other is stationary.

This method means both motors to a stationary position, massively reducing the carriage weight. I was impressed at the smoothness and acceleration that they achieved even in the small model they showcased.

I'm going to put together a few mock-ups in solidworks using this style of drive and see if anything good comes of it.
Mechanical design, I can handle, but I think the programming will be a bit of a stumbling point for me, so if anyone has any advice or had done anything similar, then any input would be greatly appreciated.

You will see that this has been implemented pretty thoroughly already in the 3D printing industry! - Look up "H-Bot" or "CoreXY"!

Core XY was proposed to alleviate some of the moment inducing aspects of the traditional H-Bot gantry system for Cartesian movement - and is therefore considered to be an evolutionary advancement on the H-Bot system.

Must have been an interesting meeting though! (Joking... I work in infrastructure automation where PLC and controls are commonplace... I always love a segway haha).

Well I can't say I'm surprised, nothing's ever new.
It's an interesting concept that I'd never seen before.

I'll still start putting together a design for one, I'll be looking into building a new printer over the next six months or so, could be a decent candidate.
Looks like there's plenty of configured firmware out there to work with this style of xy carriage, so that's a bonus.
thanks for the info chernobyl

I don't know if it's claimed, but stratasys has this design in their patent:

[www.google.com]

... I've developed and patented a similar wire-driven (two separate axes) laserplotter in 1995 - the images from the paten filing are attached in this post:
[forums.reprap.org]

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Viktor
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