I have just received a chinese 3040 cnc router and have set mach3 up to the manufacturers specs. The dro's move but not the steppers dont, I have power to the steppers (they are locked at power on) e-stop will operate on mach3 screen and reset ok,
I have voltage at the parrallel port only 3 volts at pins 3,5 & 7 change from
0-3v on operating of xyz axis and pins 2,4 & 6 stay at 3v and 4 volts on pins
10, 11, 12, 13 & 15, the rest are all 0 volts and stay that.
My set up is
x step pi 2 dir pin 3 step low ac ticked step port 1 dir port 1
y 4 5 same 1 1
z 6 7 same 1 1
Some controller boards have a difficult time with 3-volt parallel port signals.
It may be necessary for you to consider installing a parallel port board in your computer that puts out 5 volts to the output pins.
Is the controller that came with your router one of the TB6560-based boards? If you have access to an oscilloscope, you might want to probe the output of the optoisolator chips on that board to see whether or not your signals are getting through. There are some schematics of a typical TB6560 board in the following thread that may be helpful in your probing:
It may not work on 3 volts - if the input signal voltage (on the step and direction and enable input pins) is not sufficient, it may not be able to trigger the driver to move the motor.
I too bought a chinese 3040 cnc this month, i spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get it working, cause the documentation is hardly readable and parts of it is written in chinese. I finally got mine working and bellow are the setting i used for EMC2.
Using the stepconf
Units: Millimeter
Driver type: other
Step time: 5000
Step space : 5000
Direction hold :2000
Direction setup : 2000
First parport Base Add: 0x378
Base period Maximum Jitter: 35000
Parallel port setup
Pin1 - Spindle PWM, Pin2 - Not used, Pin3 - Not used, Pin4 - Ystep (inverted), pin5 - Ydirection, Pin6 - Zstep (inverted), Pin7 - Zdirection (inverted), Pin8 - Not used, Pin9 - Not used, Pin10 - Estop in, Pin11 - Not used, Pin12 - Not used, Pin13 - Not used, Pin 14 - Spindle CW, Pin15 - Not used, Pin16 - Xstep (inverted), Pin17 - xdirection.
X-AXIS CONFIG:
Motor steps per revolution: 200
Driver microstepping: 8
Pulley teeth ratio: 1:1
Leadscrew pitch : 4.0
Maximum velocity 25 mm/s
Maximum acceleration: 30 mm/s/s
Table travel : -3.0 to 290.0
Y-Axis config:
Motor steps per revolution: 200
Driver microstepping: 8
Pulley teeth ratio: 1:1
Leadscrew pitch : 5.0
Maximum velocity 25 mm/s
Maximum acceleration: 30 mm/s/s
Table travel: -3.0 to 390.0
Z-Axis config:
Motor steps per revolution: 200
Driver microstepping: 8
Pulley teeth ratio: 1:1
Leadscrew pitch : 2.5
Maximum velocity: 15 mm/s
Maximum acceleration: 30 mm/s/s
Table travel : -10.0 to 35.0
Spindle configuration:
PWM Rate: 100.0Hz
Speed1: 100.0 PWM1: 0.2
Speed2: 800.0 PWM2: 0.8
NOTE
This setting is for my driver board, i think the 3040 comes with different driver boards, it may work in yours.
I am still not very satisfied with the spindle settings, i feel am setting something wrong there. My spindle starts going off and on after working for close to 2hrs non stop. Am tempted to connect the spindle direct to main since its 240v 50hz. Right now its connected to the driver board control.
I noticed that when i load a Gcode file the spindle immediately stops spining and the machine stops all movement in the X-axis. However i found a workaround by editing the Gcode file and erasing the directive M3 SXXXXXX (where xxxxx are numbers). This directive should turn the spindle on and set its speed but here it turns it off and disables the x axis.
So far the machine works but am concerned about the spindle issue.
I know this is an ancient thread, but for anyone looking for a solution to the X-axis problem (as I just was): change pin 14 from Spindle CW to not used. When set to Spindle CW, everything will work except the X-axis will not move when the spindle is on. Changing the pin to not used will allow it to work as expected.