Newbie- +A? -A? Is the diagram wrong here?

[jovial_cynic]

Ok. Here's my setup:

I've got the diagram for the CNC controller I'm using here:
http://www.easy-cnc.com/web/download...l3and4Axis.pdf

I've got three NEMA23 6-wire stepper motors, and the wires are nicely arranged in two sets of three. Using this page (http://techref.massmind.org/techref/...pper/wires.asp), I've got the following setup:

6 wire motor:
-------------
Group A Common: 2 phases: 1 3
Group B Common: 5 phases: 4 6

Nice and easy; the middle wire in each set is the common.

The documentation on my motors say that they are unipolar. The stepper controller is a 2-phase bi-polar driver, according to the documentation.

So, looking at the -third page- of the PDF document for my CNC controller, it says to connect (A, -A) and (-B, B). Am I correct in understanding that the "phase" wires are (1,3) and (4,6)? Are those the wires that go into my contoller? The documentation also says "do not connect the middle wire of each coil." Does it mean not to connect it to the controller, or not to connect them to one another? Do I just cap them off?

How do I determine which is (A) and which is (-A)? Or does that not matter? Furthermore, how do I determine which is (A) and which is (B)? Or does that not matter either?


Lots of questions. This is all new and exciting to me, and I'm at the point where I have everything I need, and I'm now putting everything together. Any help would be appreciated.

[jovial_cynic]

Ok. So I think I've made some progress. I took a gamble and went with the wiring scheme from this thread (http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53063), and in wiring it up, the motor spins. But it spins once the driver board is powered up; it doesn't seem to react to the software (kcam4 - trial).

The driver board has a printer port, but I'm using a parallel-to-usb adapter. Does anybody know if doing so causes any problems? I assumed that winXP's drive database would handle it just fine, but without a true printer cable, I have no way of testing.

[johnmac]

If you can't get Kcam to run the motors, you may need to change the parallel port type in the BIOS setup. Try the ECP setting. Also, make sure the motors are enabled in the Kcam setup.

I don't think you will get the USB adapter to work.

John

[jovial_cynic]

You were right; the USB adaptor was a part of the problem. I've got a proper parallel cable on there, and the motor is now responding to kcam.

However... the motor spindle just... "jiggles" when I press the controls in kcam. Any clue why a motor would do this?

[jovial_cynic]

ha. disregard. i had the potentiometer set too low on the voltage; it's now working just fine. excellent.

[jovial_cynic]

Now that I've got the motor running, the next step is to get one axis on the CNC machine running:

http://newprotest.org/details.pl?1035