Jason,
Sorry about that. Most (>80%) of our drives go to OEMs and are driven by imbedded controllers. For that reason our manuals cannot be made PC specific.
Mariss
Hello all!
These things do work!
I got my steppers a steppin' today with my G201 and the TurboCNC demo!
I realize that I might not have been the first... , but I'm not going to let that take away from my accomplishment.
At the risk of seeming silly, I'd like to share something that frustrated me (needlessly) today (for about 1/2 hr.).
It seems somewhat simple now that I've "figured it out", but the directions in my G201 REV-5 installation notes for terminal 10 were not clear to *me* (not necessarily others).
I've had my geckos for a couple months, and have not seriously tried to hook them up until today. - This was because I did not have my shop computer set up with DOS. In the meantime I tried to pay attention to others who were setting them up in their own "special" way - This only led to confusion.
Combine this confusion with " Term 10 is the common anode connection for the opto isolatiors and must be connected to the +5 VDC supply of your indexer or pulse generator."
- I'm sure this explains a lot to some, but it certainly could not be as clear as "find a +5V connection from your computer's power supply and connect it to terminal 10."
I realize that I've not figured this all out as of yet, and that others may use different "indexers or pulse generators" than their PC, but I wanted to share my experience.
I finally got the "spark" that I needed from a thread in this forum from about a month ago - it still wasn't that clear.
Thanks - and sorry about the novel,
Jason
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Jason,
Sorry about that. Most (>80%) of our drives go to OEMs and are driven by imbedded controllers. For that reason our manuals cannot be made PC specific.
Mariss
Mariss,
I love your drives. I use the 320's. While I figured out pretty early (but I have an electrical background, most don't) that the +5 needed to be from the PC powersupply, I too figured the manual could be better in that respect.
Oh, and while on the manual, I think there is a resistor missing in the drawing on page 4 (gecko320 err/res circuit) between the transistor base and the momentary start/stop switch.
Other than that great manual and product! Sorry to hijack the thread!
Eric
I wish it wouldn't crash.
I am also very pleased with the drives.
Overall, they were very easy to hook up and have working - that could be what made the one difficulty that I had stick out. I was trying to make it much more complicated than it actually was. Which does not seem to be that uncommon with these things.
Now that I have them workng what is a good way to mount them?
I was wondering if I could just use a piece of thermal tape cut to size. It seems like neat stuff, but would they come loose when they warmed up?
Any thoughts on this?
Yes! Thumbs up to the Gecko drives. I use the G320 exclusively.
Thanks
Jeff Davis (HomeCNC)
http://www.homecnc.info
(Note: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those of CNCzone and its management)
They are made so a pentium fan clips right on the back. Also the terminal strip comes off so you can get at the screw slots. I just bolted mine to the panel, and they are staying cool. My motors only use 1.1 at full load.
Eric
I wish it wouldn't crash.
Could you not also use the 'high' logic from one of the parallel pins like 14,16 or 17? use it as an 'enable' of sorts?