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the motors don't turn when the power supply is on. I just reinstalled mach3 and I'm pretty sure I'm worse off then before because it doesn't show the input pins as being active.
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Maybe the parallel port is incorrectly configured in the BIOS?
Also, is the parallel port built-in into the motherboard?.
I don't know if all PCI add-on cards will work (AFAIK most of them do), but USB to parallel adapter will definitely not work.
the motors don't turn when the power supply is on. I just reinstalled mach3 and I'm pretty sure I'm worse off then before because it doesn't show the input pins as being active.
I know it will seem frustrating a first. There is a lot of terminology to learn. When you say it doesnt show input pins as active, are you talking about on the diagnostics page of Mach 3? or under ports and pins? When you reinstalled Mach 3, did you do a restart? Have you reassigned all of the pins and rebuilt your xml? Or did you just reinstall your existing one? Are you using a licensed copy of Mach3 or demo?
Can you post some screenshots of your Mach3 pinout config?
Yes I am talking about the diagnostics page. Before I uninstalled I had green pins and now they are just blank. I did reassign the pins but Can you explain the xml part? demo version.I know it will seem frustrating a first. There is a lot of terminology to learn. When you say it doesnt show input pins as active, are you talking about on the diagnostics page of Mach 3? or under ports and pins? When you reinstalled Mach 3, did you do a restart? Have you reassigned all of the pins and rebuilt your xml? Or did you just reinstall your existing one? Are you using a licensed copy of Mach3 or demo?
xml's and a profile are the same thing. When you first open Mach3 it will ask you which profile you want to use (mill, lathe, plasma etc). You should of course duplicate and modify the duplicate not the original. All of the settings will be saved as an xml file. Most likely your active low settings for step and direction are wrong, simply check both columns and save. Then go back to the diaganostics page and check the status it should now show the green leds. This setting will be just to the right of the step and direction pin settings on the ports and pins page. The demo mode does have some limitations though I am not really sure what they are. If you do plan on running a cnc anything. Mach is a great price and you can have it on as many machines as you want for no additional charge.
I finally got the longs motor kit to work, thank you all for your help.
I am having the same issue with a 'kit' from Longs-Motor. I cannot find a pin assignment drawing for the parallel port connection at the breakout board provided with my kit, does anyone have this for the 'typical' Longs-Motor breakout board? I am using EMC2 and after wiring everything according to the wiring diagram and setting up the steps/rev in EMC2 the motors power on and just lock in place. The drivers are active and the power supply checks out, so I am assuming they are just not receiving the step signal from the computer. I am using a parallel port that is hard wired into the motherboard and using Ubuntu that came with EMC2 from their website.
Another question: would the step time/step space/direction hold/direction setup number (if they're entered incorrectly) prevent the motors from being able to jog? When attempting to jog the motors nothing happens, as previously mentioned, they just stay locked in place.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm rather new to all of this, I've lurked on this forum for a couple years, but am just now taking the dive with a 3 axis setup.
THANKS!
Unfortunately the EMC2 thing limits my ability to help you. I don't know anything about it except it works too. IIRC output pins are pins 2-9 (4axis) in Mach (maybe in all software that uses the PP? IDK). Example, X axis would use pin 2 for step and pin 3 for direction. Y would use 4 & 5, Z 6 & 7 etc. There is a lot to learn, especially in the beginning. The fact your steppers are locked is a good sign. They should be if they are not moving. I will help if I can.
Yes, if those numbers are too low you might get that. Nothing bad happens if they are too large, it just limits your maximum step rate. Also note that the values are in nanoseconds, and most specs are given in microseconds.Originally Posted by rdttfc
Try starting with large values, like 5000 or 10000, and see if the steppers move.
Also, I think with most Chinese breakoutboards and drivers you have to wire an extra +5V supply to the bb board (e.g. from an usb port). Also wire +step, +dir and +enable from each driver to +5V, the corresponding negatives to the bb board pins (the enable pin is shared for all drivers), and in emc's stepconf wizard reverse the step pin. In my case at least, wiring the other way around and not reversing the pin does not work.
Thank you for the tips, I will try to apply voltages to breakout board and the drivers and see if that helps. I thought it was odd that the breakout board supplied a +5V to the drivers without having a voltage input. I will share my results tomorrow (hopefully).
Thank you bcristian! Your advice worked perfectly. The issue was that the Longs-Motor breakout board needed a +5 volt input from a USB port. I have attached an email showing what the wiring diagram for the board should be...
As a note.. I was able to drop the step time values all the way down to 50 ns and it would still step, so I think the only problem was that it did not have the +5 volt from the USB.
and thank you for the help!
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