Hey folks,

I am useing Mach2 and hesitant about hooking these up.

Questions:
1. Can I hook these to the printer port pins directly or do I need some sort of interface board from machine to computer?

I have searched these forums many rimes recently and still have this basic question unanswered after reading many threads. As I understand it...you need to have the switch make a ground connection on the pin and the software sees this and acts accordingly. Is this overly simplified or just plain wrong?

What voltage difference is the pin looking for - or ground? Is this earth ground or a center tap ground from the power supply? Does the + or - reference home or limit directions the software should fallow?

Anything would be really appreciated. Sorry if I missed another thread this may have allready been covered in.

Thx,
Larry

1. Can I hook these to the printer port pins directly or do I need some sort of interface board from machine to computer?


I've seen people wire them directly to the parallel port. Use one of the input pins and one of the ground pins. If you're worried about it, or want to make it easier, buy one of these for $25 and plug it into a second port. http://www.cnc4pc.com/Bidirectional_Breakout_Board.htm

Thanks ger21 for the quick reply.

I will get one of those if required. If not, I would love to try these ideas. Are these ideas incorrect or risky?


So it's just useing the paralell port ground as it's reference? So If I connect the ground plate to the table and the pin to the probe...It should work as a home switch on contact?

Is the E-stop ground input signal (port 1 pin 10) the same ground on the gecko 320 err/reset pin when in a fault condition? If so, could I then attach the E-stop direct to pin 10 on the paralell port? When the err/reset pin on the gecko drops to 0V, then pin 10 is pulled to 0V and triggers the software e-stop?

In order to reset the gecko drive on startup and fault, you need to provide 5VDC on the reset pin for 3 seconds. can this 5V be from the parallel port and activated by mach2 to enable the drive?

Thx,
Larry