Mx3660 Steppers whine

[Jakar]

I have a problem with my DIY router. I have done the testing with one stepper with no load. I have a workstation computer with some sort of xeon processor and nvidia quadro graphics card. The machine didnt have the DB-25 parallel port so we added a pci expansion card and instaled the drivers and it seems to work fine. When I plug in the mx 3660 controller without the DB-25 all motors have torque and hold position.

The Z axis was working but when I plugged in the stepper, the X&Y axes they both whined and refused to move. You can hear the coils doing their thing but the motors cant seem to keep up, and they quickly lose torque. The settings were the same for all axes the ports and pins section in Mach3 is defined correctly. And the problem is that when I turned the computer of and on again the results were different. Now the Y axis works alright but the X&Z dont. And they have the same issue. I measured the pins on the parallel cable and found it weird that the direction pins for the whining axes had 3.6V but for the properly working one both were 0V. Could it be that the expansion card is doing this or have I missed something?

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[ger21]

I measured the pins on the parallel cable and found it weird that the direction pins for the whining axes had 3.6V but for the properly working one both were 0V.

The direction pin voltage depends on the last direction the axis were moving.
It's 0V in one direction, and 3.3-5V in the other.

[Jakar]

Ok thank you for the heads up. Then what else could cause the motors to whine? One thing i have noticed was that when I brought the machine from somewhere else and plugged it in the motors stopped whining. but they still didnt move. The only thing that changed was the wall outlet.

[Jim Dawson]

Maybe lower the speed and acceleration?

[Jakar]

The Z axis worked fine with 4000 steps per revolution 165 mm`s/sec and 45 mm`s/sec^2 the other two kind of work at 2000 steps per revolution 30 mm`s/sec and 0.5 mm`s/sec^2 which is absurdly low considering that they`re not under load and the same stepper performed really well on the other axis. And they still stutter and have almost no torque.

[ger21]

Do you have the current settings on the drives set correctly?

[109jb]

From the MX3660 manual

"If step & direction signal voltage is lower than 5 VDC, you may need to increase step
width and direction setup time (> 5 uS) to move your motors, or avoid loss of step. "

[Jakar]

Current set to 3A RMS Peak 4.24A. Read the manual changed the setup time a million times to various values, makes no difference.

[Jakar]

And sorry forgot to post the tipe of motors and the power supply.
Motor: HS2328A NEMA 23 2-Phase 400 oz-in (2.82 N.m) High Torque Stepper Motor with 0.25'' Single Shaft
Power supply: Leadshine RPS4810 48 VDC / 10.4A Regulated Switching Power Supply with 85 - 132 or 176 - 265 VAC Input

[ger21]

What are your pulse width settings in Mach3?

[Jakar]

I have no idea where to set the PWM for the steppers. I have the step and direction settings. The PWM settings are for the spindle?

[ger21]

No, the pulse width in motor tuning.
This is what 109jb was saying in post #7.

[Jakar]

I just changed the kernell speed to 60 000 Hz now X axis doesnt whine but just twitches at the start and then loses the torque the Y axis works as intended and the Z axis works but whines.
I have 3 uS on the on the step pulse and 0 on the direction for all of the motors.

[ger21]

Change them to 5 or 10 and see if it makes a difference.

[Jakar]

Changed it to 5, 10, 15 no difference. Now the Y axis whines again and doesnt have torque when idling.
I suspect that the controller and mach dont have anything to do with the problem... Because every time I restart the computer the results are different.

[109jb]

If using a laptop have you disabled all energy saving features in the bios? Can you test with a computer that has 5V parallel port output?

[Jakar]

Using a desktop intel xeon based PC with nvidia quadro graphics card. Its old but still powerful and no it doesnt have any energy saving modes like a PC. And unfortunately I cant seem to source one for testing.

[Jakar]

Found the problem. The drivers for the parallel port were at fault. The website didn`t provide with adequate ones so I downloaded a free program that found the drivers for me. Now it works perfectly. So thank you guys for your help and your time