Hello All,
I finally got home from China to do a little work on this project. I tried last night to jog a motor using Mach 3. Firstly I connected the breakout board to the PC and gave it the +5V from an old PC Power supply. I used some LED's and resistors on a breadboard to firstly make sure I was getting a signal to the breakout board. For the direction signal I got a voltage of 5V when the x axis was moved in a negative direction and approx 0V when the motor was moved in a positive direction. For the Step signal I got either a constant 5V or a constant 0V depending on whether the the active high was enabled or disabled. I was happy enough that I had signals to this point.
I then used the 12V output on the PC Power Supply to power up the stepper driver board. The green light came on and there was no smoke. I connected up the motor properly and the step, direction and ground connections. I left the enable input empty. When I powered the board up with the motor connected the motor locked up and I could hear a high pitched noise. However, when I tried to move the motor the signal from the breakout board was now only 1.8V (not enough to cross the 2.9V minimum high signal). Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong. There are 2 inputs into the breakout board (see doc) Both Are 5V. On the power supply there are many connectors. I picked one randomly and took 1 ground and two 5V(red) cables off that one connector. Do I need to take the 5V from two different connectors?
If anyone can point me in the right direction I'd really appreciate it.
Ronan |