Need Help!- G540 and C3 index pulse card

[cmanning]

Hi folks. I'm hoping someone can help me out with my setup.

I'm currently upgrading my Taig mill from a Xylotex to a G540 motor. In the process I'm trying to get a couple of other bells and whistles added onto the mill. Currently the G540 is setup and working fine to control the steppers.

The current issue is setting up a C3 index pulse card from cnc4pc. I have tried the C3 on my Xylotex and it works fine (output pin on the C3 going to pin 10, and the gnd going to gnd on the BoB.) On the G540, I hooked the output to pin 1 on the BoB, and gnd to the PSU gnd. The C3 is set to Active High. When I fire up the G540, Mach 3 shows pin 10 as active, even though it isn't. If I trigger the C3, the LED on the board turns on, but no change in Mach 3. I've tried a couple of different settings using both Active High and Low, all without any luck.

To check if there was something wrong with the G540, I tried with an NC SPST switch hooked up to pin 1 on the BoB and the PSU gnd. Everything works great with that setup.

So I know that the C3 works fine, and I know that the G540 works fine. They just don't want to work together. Anyone have any thoughts on what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks
Chris

[rwskinner]

Chris,
Did you ever find the answer on the C3 Pulse card and the G540? I have the same issue. I noticed the voltage float on the pulse card when it's not at 5 volt, so I even tried a pull down resistor with no luck.

[rwskinner]

It appears these two will not work together unless someone figured out how. The G540 uses pulled up, digital inputs which you "ground" to activate.

The C3, uses pulled up output as well, before the hex inverted schmidt trigger. I even tried a NPN Transistor to sink to ground the output of the C3 when it went high, on a volt meter it looked fine. On a frequency meter it looked fine, but the G540 still would not see it.

I ended up moving the C3 over to a second BOB and it worked flawlessly.

[cmanning]

Mariss helped me out over the phone one day to get it working. I currently have them working together to provide me with spindle speed for my lathe.

I'm not in the shop so I don't have the details with me, but you do have to rewire some things to make it work properly. Let me know if you're still interested in the details and I'll write them out when I'm in the shop.

Chris

[rwskinner]

Sure, I would like the details. I see there have been many having the same issue but there never is a response on what fixed, other than I got it going. It would be nice to have it in the forum here.

Thanks,
Richard

[rwskinner]

Chris,
Did you ever get a chance to find the details on this?

Richard