Logitrol and C23 BOB Question

[gary22]

I am in the finish stages of building this contraption and have come upon an issue that I have not been able to resolve. (I am sure due to my lack of knowledge in electronics).

The machine is a gantry router with dual X motors. I purchased a Logitrol 5 axis controller which works fine if connected directly to the parallel port of the PC. I wanted to have a breakout board to give me some more options so I bought a C23 BOB from CNC4PC and installed it between the PC and the Logitrol driver (uses Geckos). I understood that the signals should pass through the board uninterupted, however I cant get anything to move when the board is in the mix.

If anyone has had any experience with this board or similar problems I would greatly appreciate some input .

-10F and project is on hold...(looking for a rope)

[Hood]

No experience with CNC4PC BOBs but often a BOB will require a power supply and sometimes also an enable signal, could that be your problem?
Hood

[gary22]

I have the enable hot wired now , I was using the safty charge pump and also tried it disabled. The 5V supply is connected. All the LED's are lit just seems no signal is getting thru, the DRO in Mach shows the move is being made just that the motors arent reflecting that. They dont move at all but are powered.

[Hood]

Might be worth an email to Arturo at CNC4PC to see if he can help, obviously it is either the BOB or a wiring issue if you can run fine when the BOB is out of the equation.

Sorry im not  much help

Hood

[gary22]

I sent him an e-mail, just waiting for a reply.
 I am thinking I might need a DB25 spitter to go to the breakout board and driver so the signal is not interupted but I could still use the I/Os to run options. Is that somthing that could be done? I am pretty new to all the electronics involved in this. I built the entire 4x10 router frame in less time than I have in wireing and troubleshooting...

Thanks for the input: Gary

[Hood]

Wiring a CNC is always the big time eater, especially when things start getting more complicated than a basic setup.

You could use a splitter but another option may just be to solder to the pins inside the control box.
Hood

[gary22]

I am not sure what you mean,

The controler has 5 geckos and its own little breakout board, the ribbon cables with DB25 go in the front and out the back. I am really not sure if I have everything plugged into the correct places.

Where would the solder connections be made??

Sorry if I dont seem to know much about this but the truth is I really dont. The advertisements sure made it sound easy though!

[Hood]

Afraid its me that knows nothing of the Logitrol controller, I just presumed that the Parallel cable went from PC to control and inside you could solder to the socket that the cable goes to. Does the breakout inside not have spare I/O connections that you could use?
Hood

[gary22]

The board inside the controler has a few connections (4 relays) it also has  4 wires coming out of a DB25 port for XYZ home and PC ground, this seemed strange to me as it was a 5 Axis controller and I need to slave two axises for "X" and will need two more home switches than there are connections to operate??? Therefore the C23 board.

If you are planning a trip to Alaska in the next week or so maybe you can stop by and take a look?  LOL

[Hood]

It feels like bloody Alaska here at the moment, has been down to minus 18 here and inland a bit  minus 20 or so
With one port you only get 12 outs and 5 ins so if you need more you will have to add a second port.
You can however connect all your switches up in series and only use one input for home and limits for all axis. When homing Mach will treat the switches as home switches then once all axis are homed it will then treat them as limits.

Hood