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Author Topic: USB SmoothStepper went bad  (Read 4653 times)

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USB SmoothStepper went bad
« on: October 06, 2014, 04:39:30 PM »
Hi guys, need a little help!

This morning I was working on my mill and all of the sudden my machine went haywire. I quit mach3 but machine continued going crazy. I had to disconnect the usb cable that went to the smooth stepper for it stop. I went trough a process of restarting the computer and mach3 but i could not get mach3 to work with the smooth stepper. I uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers and plugin for the smooth stepper but the only portion that I can see that is working is on the inputs. I can not get the smooth stepper to activate the outputs on the BOB(C35). I disconnected the smooth stepper from the BOB and connected with parallel port and everything works fine.

I checked the voltage on pin 17 of the smooth stepper but I can't read anything higher than 4 mv. LED lights on the smooth stepper are correct.

Question: Is there a way that this board  could have gone bad?
              Is there a way that I can use port 2 to connect to the C35 BOB?
             

Thank you,
Raul Martinez

Offline Jeff_Birt

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Re: USB SmoothStepper went bad
« Reply #1 on: October 06, 2014, 09:12:46 PM »
Change all of your Port numbers in Ports & Pins to Port 2. Port 2 Pins 2-9 on the SmoothStepper can be set to inputs or outputs so you need to set them out outputs in the SmoothStepper configuration.
Happy machining , Jeff Birt
 
Re: USB SmoothStepper went bad
« Reply #2 on: October 07, 2014, 02:01:50 PM »
Jeff, thank you for your response.

So I went and changed all of the port numbers to port 2 and changed the SmoothStepper pins to outputs but no luck on getting the charge pump to activate.
So decided to to start from scratch. I created a new profile and punched in all of the settings by hand. Still with no success.

If I change the jumper on the SCHP on the BOB then I can get the SmoothStepper to work. This evening I'm going to try and add external power to the SmoothStepper
to see if I can get voltage on the output pin for the charge pump.

Is there any other suggestion that anyone can think of for me to try?

Thanks you,
Raul Martinez

Offline Jeff_Birt

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Re: USB SmoothStepper went bad
« Reply #3 on: October 07, 2014, 03:37:27 PM »
It is just the charge pump output you are having problems with? Have you tried measuring that pin to see what output you have? With a voltmeter you should see about 2.5V when the charge pump signal is on.
Happy machining , Jeff Birt
 
Re: USB SmoothStepper went bad
« Reply #4 on: October 09, 2014, 09:59:17 AM »
Jeff, I did measure the pin but I was not getting any voltage out of it. I checked to see if I was getting voltage from the usb cable and I got a reading of 5v.
So I added an external 5v power source to the SmoothStepper board and changed the setting on the jumper and bingo, the charge pump started working.
Im guessing that when the board went haywire it must have damaged one of the components to route the power from the usb port.

Jeff, thank you and I really appreciate your time and your help. 

Regards,
Raul Martinez