Changing Homing-Speed with VB

[Brian Barker]

Do you have the ports and pins settings for your mill?

[Cuemaker]

Yes, I have 2 mills with parallel port pin#s from the port and through a powerup chip then out to the motors.  I built a new circuit board for one of the mills last year and it just uses a pass through chip running off of a 12v P/s.  The programs came from a man in Pa. a few years ago and when I called him for information he had died and his wife had thrown out all of his paperwork....  I can't seem to get the parallel port to run or show any response to anything in the config...no how much I play with the pin #'s...  I could e-mail a copy of the pin #'s if it would help..  each motor has 4 control wires and I think are unipolar....He had sent me some paperwork about the motors previous to this demise...

[Brian Barker]

Mail me the ports and pins settings and I will see what I can do

[Cuemaker]

Brian, I have sent e-mail with pin assignments...The motors I use are only 3" x 4" and run a 5 x 10 table. This circuit board is attached to the end of a parallel port cable. The other end of the cable is separated into the 3 cables for the motors...

[Chip]

Hi, Cuemaker

Can you post the Part #'s for the chip's used on your circuit board and Pin info hear also.

Thank's Chip

[Cuemaker]

Ok Brian, Thanks I'll try that this morning...  I probably should try to find new drivers etc... but this old   "dos"   stuff has been working, but these new programs will sure make life easier if I can get them to work...  If this doesn't work I'll post the chip #'s ...

[Cuemaker]

Brian,
I Tried your suggestion... I could make the motors act like they wanted to run but they just jiggled. Also they weren't assigned to the proper motor.. x=y, z=x, y=z.. I went to the tbleshooting and tried to use that, but cannot get anything, so my old dos is working and for now I guess in order to get something done,   Dos it is.  My son thinks it's something to do with older machines using different parallel voltages, but my circuit should bypass because a low triggers the circuit not a high..  I'll put the chip on for anyone that is interested....   NTE 2013  darlington driver...

[Chip]

Hi, Cuemaker

How many wires are there on the stepper motor's, if it's 5, 6 or 8 then there unipolar stepper's.

There are many ways to drive them, The NTE 2013 is a Darlington array chip, I guess there must be 2 of them to drive your stepper's which would require 12 output's from your computer, I don't believe that Mach 3 has a driver for that (I may be wrong about that though). Anyway if that is the case then it will up all your output's for your one printer port.

You can use 3 UCN5804B chips about 5.00-7.00 $ each or buy a 3 axis board for 100.00 - 150.00 $, This will put you into Step and Dir. Control, 6 output's used. some of those board's will allow other features such as Input's and output's.

Hope this helps Chip

[Cuemaker]

What is a part # or name of a dirver board product that I could use for my Unipolar motors.   One of my machines has a 4th axis. At this time I switch the Y axis plug to the rotary head when I need to use it.  Y axis is 5 revs per inch as is the X axis. The rotary head and the Z axis are both 20 revs per inch.  I have a A-B parallel port switch now to switch between machines. Could I do the same? I realize I would have to use a different configuration in Mach3.   I think this simple setup that I have running   "Minc94" in dos may not be so bad after all, using simple G-code and different parameter files for each mill operation....If there is a simple solution with Mach3 Please let me know.....

[Chip]

Hi, Cuemaker

If your changing from DOS to Windows, You need Win 2000 or XP and a CPU speed of around 1000 MHz / 1 Ghz.

Hear is a link to one MFG http://www.eftechusa.com/prod03.htm this is a 12 Volt 4 axis board for 159.00 $.

There are many to chose from check Ebay.

You can use an A/B switch and 2 config files to run both machines.

There may be other's that can comment better than me on this, try a post under Mach Chat, Third party software and hardware support forums.

Hope this Helps, Chip