Need Help!- Connecting hardware and software

[tizdall]

I am in the process of constructing my first cnc machine and am at the final stage and could use some help troubleshooting my setup

When i load mach3 i cannot jog my motors although they seem to have power and everything on the software side has been set up.

I have checked the input voltages for the controllers and they are getting the necessary 5v and the red led indicates that there is power to the break out board and the 4 controllers.

When i plug in the power the motors cannot be turned so i think that means i have power to them as well.

i am using 4 Kieling 4030 controllers and a 115/230 v power supply and a parallel port breakout board. I have 4 stepper motors and my parallel port is connected the printer port on my sony vaio

Please help!!

[Zig]

I have no experience with mach3 so i can not address the software however do make sure the LPT on your laptop is not a 3.3 v interface. If it is You may find it can not interface with your breakout board.

[bharbour]

Hi,
You don't mention what type of breakout board you are using, but a common feature of commercial parallel breakout boards is the charge pump safety switch. It requires the PC and control software to put out a stream of pulses on a parallel port pin to enable the motor step signals. Mach 3 is set up to deal with this, all you need to do is tell it which pin to drive. Missing the charge pump signal will do exactly what you have described.

Another thing to look at is the Emergency stop signal. The boards I have worked with require this input to be jumpered or have a closed switch contact on it to allow motion.

From your description, it sounds like you are almost there.

BobH

[tizdall]

Thanks for the advice, I think I have the charge pump activated but I could be mistaken. Here's what I know so far:

I am using a c10 bidirectional breakout board from cnc4pc.com and I have experimented a bit and isolated my problem.

I have isolated my electronic setup to deal with just 1 motor to simplify the arrangement. So right now i have a c10 bidirectional break out board connected to the computer with 1 controller, a 36 V power supply and a motor (the kind with the 4 wires)

And Bobh- the breakout board has an enable pin which I think is where one would connect a charge pump which I provide 5V when I test it.. or did you mean something else?

Here's what i know: the break out board needs its own supply of 5V in order to work, however, when I supply power to the board and try to jog the motor with mach3, all I get is a constant 5.08V from my 2pin and 3pin. What's weird though is that when I disconnect the power. The board still has a little bit of juice(from the computer), enough to register values from the 2 and 3 pins. So when I jog the motor in mach3 is show a distinct and constant change in voltage!

And, when i have my ground pin connected on the board and the 5V going to my EN pin but not the 5V pin I can register a change in voltage when I jog the motors but a lot less distinct this time (like .02V per change in jogging direction)

I've tried both arrangements with the pulse and direction supplied to the controller and then to the motor but neither allows me to control the motor itself with the jogging. I think because there isn't the right Voltage change in supplied to the controller to tell the motor to spin. And when all 5V are provided its as if the system is flooded and no change can be registered.

So, why when I give the board power does it not register a change, but when I give it just a little bit the board performs its function? I have ordered a new breakout board, parallel cable and power adapter to see if any of these three items are broken.

I also noticed that when I have my 5V adapter plugged in to the outlet but disconnected from the break out board I can get my motor to spin randomly when I go to connect it. The motor doesn't spin efficiently or anything but it turns both directions randomly until the wire is completely anchored to the pins.

Can anyone explain this or give me any other ideas for troubleshooting?

[ger21]

Originally Posted by tizdall Here's what i know: the break out board needs its own supply of 5V in order to work, however, when I supply power to the board and try to jog the motor with mach3, all I get is a constant 5.08V from my 2pin and 3pin.

You can't actually measure the step pin, but thew direction pin (3?) should change from 0V to 5V when you change directions. One direction is 0V, the other is 5V. Make sure you're getting that first. Check at the port, at the breakout board, and at the drive. Make sure all 3 are the same.

[tizdall]

Hey Gerry-

I checked the output of the breakout board for all of the direction pins as configured in mach3 but all of them remained constant at 5.08V... does this mean my cable is the problem?

[bharbour]

I looked at the docs for the C10 and it does not have a charge pump safety on board, the EN input is their EStop input. If the EN pin is not tied to +5V, none of the outputs do anything. Connecting the +5V power supply to the EN pin without connecting it to the +5V input on the board might be hard on the board, it depends on how defensively the guy designed it.

You have to set jumper X6 to the 1-2 positon for the step and direction signals to be outputs.

Looking at the Keling docs, it looks like the common lead for the step and direction will need to be set to +5V with the X7 jumper on the C10 board set 2-3. The step and direction outputs from the board should be tied to the CP- and CW- terminals on the Keling boards and the common +5V from the C10 board to the CP+ and CW+ terminals on the Keling boards. The polarity (+/-) matters on this wiring.

Not powering the C10 board properly can make random stuff happen, the C10 manual cautions against this.

Make sure you have the correct parallel port selected in Mach, I think it defaults to port 0 and it should be port 1 or maybe 2, depending on how the PC is set up.

Gerry's advice on measuring the the direction line and getting it working is good. You can't really measure the step line without an o'scope. I think that once you get the direction lines working, other stuff will work too.

That is about all I can suggest from a distance, good luck,
BobH

[tizdall]

Thanks for the input bh I think I have tried every possible configuration I can think of but it never really changes a whole lot.

I tested the female connectors on both of the computers and could only register a constant 5V from the desktop and a constant 4.3V for the laptop. My testing procedure was as follows: inserting two 22 gauge wires into pin 3 and pin 20 as those pins are traditionally labeled on a dc25 connector. I then connected a voltmeter and ran mach3 with the 3 pin configured for direction of the x axis. Jogging does not change the output of my voltmeter it stays constant at either 5 or 4.3V. I would expect to register a change in voltage coming out of this pin... no?

I am wondering about my procedure, if those pins I'm using should be giving me a change in voltage or if I'm using the wrong setup.

I doubt that 2 computers would have a malfunctioning printer ports...

Any thoughts?

[bharbour]

Assuming that pin 3 is configured as your direction pin for the axis you are jogging, you should be able to see the voltage change as you change direction of jogging. Pin 20 is listed as a ground in my docs, so 3 and 20 sound right. It should go down below 0.8V in one direction and be up in the 4 to 5 volt range in the other direction. The step signals need a scope to make sense of.

Measuring the pins at the connector on the PC would be a good thing. A hosed parallel cable might do many unpleasant things.

You know about reseting the software EStop switch in Mach don't you? Nothing happens untill you do.

In the ports and pins menu, the port selection and pin selection must match the hardware in the PC. If you go into the Windows driver manager, it will tell you which LPT port you have configured in your machine.

I think that you have a Mach setup problem. Until you can see the direction pins move under the control of Mach, there is nothing that the hardware can do. I would look at the EStop input configuration in Mach, it might have the polarity wrong and prevent the software from starting.

What operating system are you running? One machine I tried had Vista on it and apparantly it is possible to get Mach to work but something extra has to be done. I have had success with 2000 and XP with Mach.

I am not a Mach wizard. I have put a couple of machines together for a friend and gotten them working under Mach, but I don't have it at home or use it regularly. There is a Mach support group here and the phone support is very good.

I agree, it seems unlikely that two computers would have bad parallel ports.

Good Luck,
BobH

[tizdall]

IT WORKS!!!

Thanks for all of the support and advice. I received a new breakout board and parallel cable the other day and replaced them in my electronics and voila! I think my problem was the cable and when I was troubleshooting the original breakout board I put a voltage where it shouldn't be.

All the axes are connected and operational and I got it to draw the classic roadrunner with a pencil last night.

Thanks again (especially Bobh) for sticking with me through this and good luck to everyone else out there!

tiz