I have an issue. The computer controlling my router died. It was old and had a parallel port. The new one does not have a port and running windows 8 64 bit I had to get a smooth stepper. After connecting and following the instructions from Warp9, two of the three axis' work, but X does not. I've done some troubleshooting by swapping motors around on the gecko and the X motor work when it's on Z. Since it's controlling the other axis okay I'm leaning towards an issue with the settings in Mach3 or the settings for Smooth Stepper. When I tell Mach3 to move X I see the numbers moving on Mach3 but the X axis does nothing. Also Jog is not available Any help would be appreciated.
Anyhow, assuming that the system did work before, your problem could be an incorrect pin assignment in Mach3 for the X axis, or maybe it is not enabled.
Go to Config / Ports&Pins/Motor outputs and look at the pin assignment for X.
Providing a screen shot of this page might help.
Yes I'm using a Gecko G540 as the BOB. The only new thing was the ESS and I'm still trying to figure out if there is a page to define the pins out from the ESS to the router itself.
Did you do a clean install Mach3 and use a new machine profile .... or did you copy and paste the folder?
ESS and G540 is pretty much plug and play when it comes to the Primary Port (port 1).
So make sure you start with a clean Profile..
Also make sure you don't have any conflicting Xml's in the driver folder......
The pinout from the ESS is IDENTICAL to the parallel port - but you have 3 parallel ports available instead of 1. Mach3 allows for this as you have to define both port and pin.
Well, further testing with the monitor app for stepper has me thinking I may need to bite the bullet and get a new G540 or see if I can get it repaired. I tried creating a new profile and that still didn't do the trick. Though I did finally figure out why jog wasn't working. It was operator head space. (that gap between the ears) I didn't have Jog enabled in Mach3
As an update I followed the testing steps shown in this
, and found that it was a physical issue. one of the mosfets on the G250 driver board for X had shorted out. Since I have an older unit I was able to buy a replacement g250 for less than half the price of the newest and shiniest version in the latest G540. Also after talking to them on the phone to be sure I was ordering the right one, I found I can still RMA the old one. They will test it and if it's bad I'll receive a replacement. So I'll have a spare.
When I look at the support from companies like Gecko and Warp9 on the one hand, and various 'Chinese' vendors on the other hand, I must say i see a persistent difference. Yes, I have had a few failures in the field with both Gecko and Warp9, but once I had provided the necessary info (photos and test data) about the failures, replacement under warranty was immediate.
Their agent in Oz, Peter Homann, has also been excellent.
ESS Smoothstepper and G540 on Mach3
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