Look forward to hearing your success on the new plan, I am sure that is what you will be doing rather than asking how to
Damn Hood, wish I had as much confidence in me as you seem to.
I bet your just hoping I get it so you don't have to do it for me!
I didn't look at the date when I started this thread before this post but it's probally been a couple months. Thanks to a LOT of help and generosity from the members of this GREAT forum I finally have a system that works like I hoped it would when I started dreaming about this diy cnc project almost 3 years ago now.
I may have never got it without Hood, Chaoticone and Overloaded. Hope you guys don't mind if I call you my friends. Especially Hood because nobody but a GOOD friend would have stuck with me and helped as much as you have,Thank You very much !!
I got my "watchdog" board installed, working and tested, it does just what I wanted. When I have a drive alarm it puts Mach3 into e-stop and activates the inhibits to all drives, the double safety I was after.
The easiest alarm for me to cause is "22 encoder error" just by unplugging an encoder cable. When I do that I get the e-stop and even if I jumper the e-stop circuit so Mach can be reset I still have no motion because of the drive inhibits being activated, perfect. But with the encoder cable unplugged I can flip the toggle switch on the watchdog off, reset Mach3, and jog the axises that are not alarmed, Great! The led's even work like they should, no alarms = green, cause an alarm = red, again, perfect.
Man, am I ever pleased to see things working correctly after all the troubles I've had. I'm getting ready for work now, will post the pics as soon as I have time.
Once again gentlemen, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR HELP AND PATIENCE with me.
Rick