Enable connections on drivers

[metalhacker]

How should these be connected. My drivers will work with
Kcam with the enable hooked up as directed to the pport pins. With Mach2
there is no pin connection for the enable, thus I cannot get
them to run even with configuring the software as per Art's
instruction.
Any help appreciated.

[Karl_T]

If Mach2 doesn't have this feature you'll just have to jumper it out. From what you said, you need +5 volt to this pin for the servo drive to run. Many servo drives have a +5 volt on them, you could just run a wire to this pin. Of course you no longer have the drive enable feature, you'll have to find another way to drop out the drives. Maybe you just want to put in a relay that drops out whenever the Estop is pushed.

Karl

[metalhacker]

The problem is which pin do I run jump the enable to?
The enables with Kcam are configured to output pins.
I tried configuring the Mach2 to an enable thru #8 or 9
output but still have nothing.

[Karl_T]

I'll preface by saying I've never used Mach2.

It sounds like Mach2 doesn't use the enable capablity on a drive. You need to find a work around. What driver do you use? Do you have a schematic for it? A manual? I'm looking for a +5 volt source on the drive itself. And the drive enable input. For testing, place a jumper here. For machine operation, this should be wired into the Estop circuit.

I was lucky, I've used two different brands of servo drivers and both units came with manuals discussing this issue.

Karl

[metalhacker]

I think I am just going to run Kcam for now so I can
make some stuff. I will have to deal with Mach2 later as I have
no time to play with it anymore though I would like to use it
evntually...may take a different control than what I have as I have
tried about everything with this one.
What are you using?

[ger21]

Under ports and pins, you have to set up both the "output signals" and "output pins". And make sure you have active high or low set correctly. The manual suggests you hook all the enable lines to one pin.

[anthony]

Are you using a breakout board between your PC and your drives?
Mach2 has a ChargePump feature that will send pin 17 high only when
Mach2 is running.. use pin17 as your Enable signal.

of course you'll need a charge pump circuit between pin17 and your drive.. some
breakoutboards have this built in. Mach2 documentation also has a schematic for
buiilding your own.

basically you want to send 5V to your drive's enable pin when everything is "okay" and "ready to run" ... you dont want your drive enabled, for example, when your PC boots and your software isn't running yet.

like KarlT said, you can just feed 5V to your drive's enable pin all the time, keeping your drives always at the ready. get your 5V from anywhere you'd like. but then you're no longer using the safety feature.

when set up correctly, the other outputs in Mach2 won't come on unless your gCode tells them to.. or you click an onscreen button. . sort of putting the horse before the cart. not good candidates for Enable.

-anthony