Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: warhorse on January 29, 2010, 11:41:00 PM
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HI,
Im new to the forum, glad to be here. I just received my new machine, which had practically no support documentation with it, so Im really winging it, with minimum CNC experience.
The machine has 4X8 bed, has dual spindles, and dual 4th axis rotaries. Its one of the 1325 models commonly seen, with 90 VDC spindles (3.5 KW). It seems like a decent machine.
I have the 3 axis plugged into my console, but the spindles and the rotaries are not plugged in yet.
Ive installed mach3 ver 2.63. Im carefully and slowly working through the mach manual. Checked the parallel port driver....looks good on my system, as far as I can tell.
Switched on the control console, CNC steppers initialized with brief vibration.
I tabbed to the Jog window, pushed Y+ button....machine moved Y+. Pushed Y- button and machine moves yet again Y+.
I tried to jog Z and X axes....No response. Only jogging is in Y+ direction using both Y+ and - Buttons or analogous shift arrows.
I PMed Hood and he suggested: "It could well be wrong pin assignment but could also be loose wires or even your drive is configured for CW/CWW instead of Step/Dir. Would need more info about your machine, would also be best to start a thread on the General forum as you will get advice from lots of people and likely get things sorted quicker.
Hood"
"your drive is configured for CW/CWW instead of Step/Dir." Im uncertain how to check this.
Other things I thought to check are:
- Parallel port cable could be bad - get new one.
- wiring may be wrong - find and check a schematic for misplaced wires
- check wiring on stepper sockets plugging into console.
- Trace jog voltage from breakout board to motor, find any continuity breaks
- Run mach3 on another computer to check for same results
Im sure this problem has been discussed, any advice or direction would be great!
thanks in advance,
Warhorse in SC
jon.johanssen@gmail.com
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Do you have a link to the actual machine as I am not really sure what you have.
With regards the CW/CCW remark I made, some stepper/servo drives have an option for encoder following and if your has that it could be set that way rather than Step/Dir.
Do you know the make/models of the drives? Could you take a few pics of your machine and maybe the inside of the control box and attach them.
Hood
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Hood,,
Ive attached some pics of the machine and the components. Maybe this will help determine where to start tracing the problem.
The BOB appears to be a very cheap one, and perhaps it should replaced anyway.
Thanks in advance
ND in SC
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heres some of the components
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pics
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;D
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Guys,
I checked the continuity on all the pins of my cable...all good, so thats not the issue.
thanks in advance for any advice guys
ND in SC
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She's a beauty ND,
Looked at the drive website and they mention "software configurable" for cw/ccw (double pulse) or step/ direction set-up for drives that look similar to these. Your model is not listed.
Just FYI. http://www.leadshine.com/SupportList.asp?ClassType=Software
RC
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YeS, try putting Sw 5 to On, I had a leadshine drive that the docs said CW/CCW was one way and I found it was actually the other so might be the case with yours as well.
BTW you will get the docs here for the MD2278 http://www.motion.nl/products/mcs/md2278d_mcs.pdf
Hood
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Thanks guys Ill look into that about the Y axis. I dont know where to start with the the X and Z axes which do not function at all.
Ill start tracing wires :-[
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Best to start at the computer, remove the cable and you will probably have to change the active state of limits and E-Stop so you can get out of reset, you do that in Ports and Pins Inputs. Once you have Mach open and reset is not flashing put a voltmeter between a Dir pin and a Gnd pin on the port and jog that axis one way then the other. If you see it going 5v to 0v depending on axis direction it shows computer is fine. Move to next axis Dir pin and repeat, then next etc.
Hood
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Thanks hood. were working through it now.
regards,
ND
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Greetings
Our problem of sudddenly loosing the jog control probably has been experienced by others. Intitally it was working OK. We plugged in pendant -USB with manual pulse generator and that worked initially also OK. Then it stopped and even keyboard jogging stopped. After checking the pendant on another machine there it did not work either. Another pendat which works on the second machine is not working on first either. After checking the correct mapping of keys for keyboard jogging, these needed resetting. But even then keyboard jogging is not working. Otherwise keyboard allows MDI and other functions OK. One thought is, since we ocasionally run plasma cutting on this machine, as well as router spindle, wheather plasma may have done some damage. Changing the keyboard did not do any good. Should we reinstall Mach3, or is there likelyhood of PC being somehow damaged?
Any thoughts and suggestions would be apreciated
Thanks
Michael Haber
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If you attach your xml I will see if I can replicate your issue here.
Hood
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Thanks Hood,
Attached is the xml file for Biesse-Router, zipped.
The machine is at PS Fabrications, old Italian router
converted in Nov2010, to do aluminium extrusions and
ocassionally doing plasma cutting of steel extrusions.
Hope we can get to the bottom of this problem.
I have not experienced this type of problem
on my 5axis router, running for past 7 years.
Results of having my machine can be seen on
www.soloray.com.au
Regards
Michael Haber
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Two things I see. First is you have the Jog mode set to MPG, when set there jogging will not work from keyboard, only from MPG. Press the Tab key and change the Jog Mode so that it is at continuous and it should again jog from the keyboard.
The other thing is you dont have the standard keys assigned for X and Z axis jogging. This may be intentional but if not then change them back from Config menu then System Hotkeys.
Hood
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Thanks again, it was a simple solution in the end,
and we learned something new about Mach3.
After resetting the assignment also of keys for jogging
(strange how they changed again) machine works OK
Best regards
Michael Haber
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It could well be your pendant that is changing things, especially if it works via a plugin.
Hood