Hey everyone,

My friend's father built my controllers for me. I am trying to configure it to work in Mach3.

Heres the deal. I hook up the motors, and then I turn on the power supply. I can't move the motor, so it has holding torque. Also, the controller has two leads coming off of it for step I guess.

When I touch the yellow wire, it steps the motor once. Then again when I touch it next, etc. The green one doesn't do that.

Then, it has two red leads that I assume are for direction. When I switch them, the direction the motor moves in changes.

Now I need to hook it up to Mach 3 through the parallel port. How can I do this? I know how to set the motor pins etc. in the software but everything I've tried so far has failed. I need help quick if possible!

Also, when I hook up the two red leads (direction) to the parallel port, the motor loses it's holding torque.

Pics:


http://www.powerpackedpc.com/images/tbcs/CIMG0314.JPG (http://www.powerpackedpc.com/images/tbcs/CIMG0314.JPG)
http://www.powerpackedpc.com/images/tbcs/CIMG0315.JPG

from what I see the red and white off the top are the connections to the motor, the black and red off the bottom are the motor power, the blue from the top is also for the motor (common ground). The orange is +5 to power the logic chip and the green is dirction, the yellow is step.

Thanks!

How should I hook it up to my connector? It looks like the image I attached. The top left is just a ground, the other 6 are the cables I need to figure out. Which ones attach to the printer port? Which pins on the port?

Thanks a ton for your help, I don't know what I'd do without it.

Thanks!

on your parelel port you would connect the green and yellow to pin (your choice of output pins) and the parelel port ground connects to the blue.

I should mention that the blue splits into two wires. It has one lead off the motor but then it splits and has two leads. What should I do with those?

from what I see you will hook only 3 to the pc, the blue green and orange as I posted above. I'm not sure what motors you have so I cant comment on the connections.

Thanks a ton. I have Astrosyn Miniangle Steppers. They are 6.0v and 1.2 amps. How much torque and speed do you think I can get with them?

How many wires do your motors have?

Six wires. I believe they are unipolar.

I guess I'll just attach one blue wire, then?

EDIT: By the way, the orange one is attached to the board on the bottom. It is soldered to the top and the bottom, connecting something I guess. See pics.

EDIT: I've got it working! This is a glorious day indeed!

I'm glad to hear it :)

The motors are indeed very cool to have working. However, when I jog them, they don't do full circles. They kinda jolt back and forth, moving in the general direction eventually, but still very jerky and not fluid, straight circles, even when I hold down the jog button.

Any ideas? Any settings I need to play with?

On my machine, I have tryed to run it with several different computers and only the Dell 3 gig I have will run it smooth. I had a very nice 1.7 gig generic machine that I intended to use to run it, but I had to trade it for a 1.1 gig Dell my son had. Even a laptop I had did the same thing. But what your describing may be the wiring to the motor fields. Double check how you have the four winding wires connected. At first I had homebuilt controllers also but after rough proformance like your describing I just broke down and purchased 3 Gecko drives and that part was history till I had the runin with the machines not working as planed.

I sure recall the grin on my face the first time I got them to move :)
Have fun!

can you draw a diagram of how your 6 wires are connected, im assuming with 6 wires, they are like my motors having in effect 2 coils, each with one center tap?

Hey guys,

Here is a diagram of the motors wires and how they connect to the stepper. The drawing is a top view of the connector on the end of the motors, the wires from the controller connect to those pins on the conenctor.

The yellow and green wires conenct to the parallel for step and direction.

So, any ideas? I am giving the motors 5 volts through a computer power supply.

what the guys here will need to know in order to help is if you do have 6 wire motors, which ones are connected inside the motors. and how you have these connected to the driver. do you know how to use an ohm meter to figure out how the motor is set up inside? if not send me a Private message and ill walk you thru it.

Ed

Ahh, okay. Thank you for that. I do indeed have six wires - I'll try measuring their resistance again this afternoon. However, if you look at my diagram, the wires match up like this:

White 1: Can match with any blue (blue wire connected to the controller splits in two)
White 2: Can match with any blue (blue wire connected to the controller splits in two)
Then the red wires can go either way into their sockets, red 1 first or red 2 first, it doesn't matter.

Any ideas?

i guess I have to ask these questions. these are hand built drivers correct? do you know what circuit design they are based on? You say the wires plug in to a certain place, but how do you know that this is the correct location, are you working with instructions or diagrams? Im not doubting you, but if it isnt working somethings wrong. Did your friends father test them and they did work on his desk? If so we can eliminate the whole motor wiring question. If they never were seen to actually work, then there is a whole range of things to look for. If you have a file showing the schematic, or a link to where the plan was found, maybe you could post it here so someone here can get a handle on what you are working with.

Hello,

I'll try and get the schematic for you guys. I believe he designed it himself. However, he did test it and he had it working, just not with the computer. He tested it by hand but since we never hooked it up to the printer port I have no idea if it works or not.

if it seemed to work by pulsing it manually but wont work right with the computer, id try going into your software and turning your velocities waaay down or set your jog speed slower. maybe see if there is a max pulse rate or something you can lower. also if you can adjust the pulse width settings to a longer pulse if possible. Im wondering if the computer is sending signal too fast for either your driver, or the motor to respond to. slowing everything down by 50% may smooth the motion out, especially if you have a weak or very low voltage power supply for your motors. 5v is very little to power a stepper. if the rated voltage on them is 3 to 5 v you probably want to go with something closer to 24 to 48 v depending on what your controller is built to handle. at least switch to the 12 v output of your power supply. as a rule of thumb steppers usually like to run at between 5 and 10 times their "face plate" voltage. try these changes and let me know the results.

Ed

if it seemed to work by pulsing it manually but wont work right with the computer, id try going into your software and turning your velocities waaay down or set your jog speed slower. maybe see if there is a max pulse rate or something you can lower. also if you can adjust the pulse width settings to a longer pulse if possible. Im wondering if the computer is sending signal too fast for either your driver, or the motor to respond to. slowing everything down by 50% may smooth the motion out, especially if you have a weak or very low voltage power supply for your motors. 5v is very little to power a stepper. if the rated voltage on them is 3 to 5 v you probably want to go with something closer to 24 to 48 v depending on what your controller is built to handle. at least switch to the 12 v output of your power supply. as a rule of thumb steppers usually like to run at between 5 and 10 times their "face plate" voltage. try these changes and let me know the results.

Ed

Thanks a ton Ed. I will go play with the velocities etc. right now. My motors are 6 volt motors, do you think it will be okay to switch to the 12v on my computer power supply? Will that be too much?

Okay - here are my results.

Turning down the velocity way down and changing the pulse did indeed help, but it certianly did not fix the problem. When I apply 12v to the motors, I get holding torque, but they won't turn via computer using Mach3.

12 v is not too much, im not sure what you have in the way of resistors in your setup. but 12 should be ok untill we know better. someone else can advise you on the resistor values for your motor/power supply situation. my drivers dont require power resistors so i never had to mess with the formula.

it improved, how? what changed? you say they wont turn with mach3, but do they try? are they buzzing or twitching or anything at all when you try to jog the machine? you had said in an earlier post that the motor was buzzing and slowly moving in the right direction. was that also mach3?
would the direction change when you tried to jog the other way?

12 v is not too much, im not sure what you have in the way of resistors in your setup. but 12 should be ok untill we know better. someone else can advise you on the resistor values for your motor/power supply situation. my drivers dont require power resistors so i never had to mess with the formula.

it improved, how? what changed? you say they wont turn with mach3, but do they try? are they buzzing or twitching or anything at all when you try to jog the machine? you had said in an earlier post that the motor was buzzing and slowly moving in the right direction. was that also mach3?
would the direction change when you tried to jog the other way?

Both times I used Mach3. With the 5 volts, I could move them clockwise and counterclockwise by jogging in different directions, so that is fine. It would move in a general motion, but it would say move 5 degrees clockwise, then jerk 2 degrees back counter-clockwise, then repeat.

When I adjusted the settings, they moved further and smoother, but still jerked back and certainly did not do full circles.

When I tested them with the 12v, they didn't buzz, jerk, move at all in either direction, nothing. Nada. However, they did hold torque.

how fast is this happening, how many times a second is it jerking?

what other software is on this machine, old printer drivers can and do check the port ever little while to see if there is a change such as a scanner door opening or a low ink signal from a printer. these little pulses may be masking the proper pulses that mach3 is sending out. go look at all the software that is installed and make sure it isnt scanner software. also go to your printer folder and unisntall any and all printers for the time being. look in your proccesses running box "controll alt delete" and see if you recognize anything as being associated with a printer or scanner. also, watch the CPU numbers to the right of the .exe name and see if something there goes from zero to something higher at the same interval that your stepper is jerking. if you see one. end that process and see if that cures it. lots to do but its all easy, ill watch for a responce.

Hello,

The machine was set up just for CNC, and it has virtually no other software working on it. How many times a second? I'm not sure, but I'd say 1-3 times, it's a very jerky, buzzy kind of movement. It responds to jogging, but that's all I would call it - a response, not a valid movement.

at this point im wondering if your have the proper pinouts. im sure you have them set as we are assuming its wired, but no one is really sure if green is direction or orange is step or whatever? have you tried reversing your step and direction wires? they could be backwards and perhaps still respond that way. im sure the result would be a very jerky odd responce. try switching them for a second and see the difference.


ed

Hi,

I'll go try that soon. I wired the step to pin 2 and the direction to pin three, and set it as that in Mach3. If I simply change the settings, that will do the job, right?

Update: I tried switching the pinouts and ended up getting no results at all with them switched. So, I switched them back and took a video of the motors moving to give you a better idea of what they are doing.

Link (http://www.powerpackedpc.com/cnc/motors.WMV)

do they make that real high pitched sound or is that a result of the video compression. if they make that high of a sound, im thinking the speeds are still too high. even when i run mine as fast as possible they still dont play that high of a note. are they real easy to rotate by hand while they are buzzing like that? will they turn easier one way than another? and get in touch with your freinds father and get a schematic, or at least verify what color wire is supposed to do what. we/you have to start to rule some things out, even simple things help. check with him on the voltage the controller will handle. start thinking about getting a set of zylotex drivers. they are so reliable and well documented that you would never have this problem again. Im out of town tomorrow, so you are on your own for a while.

Thanks again for all of your help.

That is indeed the noise they make. I guess I will turn them way down again. Is there a way to change the jog speed in Mach3?

I will talk to my friend's father this weekend if I can about these controllers and I will try and figure out the deal with these issues.

I've considered buying a xylotex or similar but I simply don't have the money for them right now. Also, my motors are fairly weak at only 6 volts.

lots of steppers are rated at way less than that. so thats not really an issue. not sure about the jog speed in mach, im sure you can, its great software. try running the stepper by typing a line into the command line box on mach something like g01 z10 f10 all the 0 are zeros not letter O
this will command it to turn at a very low speed. let me know if turning speeds or the other changes help. ill check email before i leave tomorrow and see whats up.
Ed