Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: dgates80 on January 07, 2011, 07:08:28 PM
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HI,
I am setting up Mach 3 with a Geckodrive G540.
When I turn the charge pump switch off on the front panel of the G540, I have normal stepper motor control. Good so far.
When the charge pump switch is on, and Mach 3 is not running, the G540 fault light come on, so far so good.
I have port 1 pin 16 configured to output the charge pump signal in Mach 3. The LPT1 port is in EPP.
If I set "charge pump on in estop" true in the config, I can press reset in Mach 3 and the G540 goes ready. I suspect this tells me that the electrical connectivity for pin 16 is fine. Pressing RESET does not fault the g540, as I would expect with the charge pump signal always active. the hardware estop switch does fault the g540 normally though, and I see estop toggle on the diagnostics screen as i would expect.
If "charge pump on in estop" is set to false, when I send a reset, the g540 flashes green and immediately goes back to red (fault), I suspect due to the estop signal coming from the g540 not toggeling to estop false quickly enough, perhaps? A race condition of sorts, I think.....
When the reset is pushed and I get a green flash on the g540, I also see a very fast flash on the diagnostics screen "emergency" LED. I also get the "fix inputs" box pops up at various time in this process when it loses track of the estop state.
Running drivertest gives what the docs say is normal results, a nice straight line with few or no glitches.
I tried setting the charge pump to active low with no real change apparent, either way.
What am I missing here? I desire that the g540 fault when RESET is pressed, or is it working the way it is supposed to?
Thanks!
Don Gates
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Oh, and the g540 faults, as expected, when Mach3 is shut down, and goes ready when mach 3 is started with "charge pump on in estop" = true. Hmmmmm.
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If I disble the estop input in Mach 3 (port 1, pin 15) then the g540 toggles normally, however it will no sense the hardware estop switch as I would expect. I think it might be a Mach 3 timing problem.
Suspected sequence of events:
Starting from a Mach 3 "not ready" state, with port 1 pin 15 enabled:
1. I press Mach 3 "reset"
2. Mach 3 enables the charge pump out on pin 16
3. G540 goes ready momentarily (flashes green)
4. Mach 3 checks estop input and still sees estop on pin 15 (flashes estop input red)
5. Mach 3 turns off charge pump signal on pin 16
6. g540 faults due to lack of charge pump signal
7. Mach 3 faults on estop
If there was a short delay in checking estop status I bet this would work. I like the idea that the motor controller would fault if the motion control software is not running, and I cannot have Mach 3 not fault when the estop switch is activated. Hmmmmm.
I am running the demo version (still building my machine) version R3.043.022 on Windows 7 Ultimate. It's a AMD 64 machine about a year old, 4gb ram, 2.2 ghz, vanilla machine....
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Check the active H/L for the estop you may have it backwards for the application.
(;-) TP
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Yep, I thought the same thing, tried it both active high annd active low, can't recall at the moment but one worked and one didn't, sort of toggled basic function (i.e., one was clearly broke and one worked as expected) and did not seem to have an effect on the charge pump thing at all. Thanks for the suggestion though!
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Go to Gen Config then look in the Gen Config section and look for a checkbox that says Chargepump on in Estop, select it. That will keep the sytem UP so you can test all the inputs
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Yep, that works, and the inputs test out fine. However, I do NOT want charge pump on in estop, however I may be forced to operate that way.
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Still no joy on the charge pump thing. Anybody have any ideas?
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Call Gecko.
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But but but.... everything else is working great! Good idea though, see what they have to say. Sure seems like a Mach 3 problem though. I might fire up EMC2 this weekend and see if I similar behavior, I have been wanting to play with that any way and it's an excuse to buy a new hard drive. Really do want to go with Mach 3 though, for sure.
I am going to fly up to York, PA for the Cabin Fever Expo, I will run into quite a few CNC'ers there and I will ask around. I *think* a Mach 3 / Artsoft guy is going to be there too.
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If it was a Mach3 problem, you definitely wouldn't be the only one having it. Especially since it seems that just about everyone building routers uses a G540 and Mach3.
Have you tried the G540 .xml file on Gecko's website?
Just guessing here, but is it possible that noise is tripping the E stop? Any error messages in Mach3?
Also wondering if the parallel port isn't suspect. A lot of users have had G540 issues that were caused by a weak parallel port. Perhaps a PCI parallel port card might be worth a try. At $20, probably the cheapest test.
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I was thinking along the same lines. I did indeed try a different PP, same results. I am stumped. I do know that when I turn on the G540 box the FM radio goes to white noise, this thing generates some no small amount of RFI. Nope, no error messages in Mach.
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I spoke with Brian briefly at Cabin Fever expo... folks, there are *way* cool things coming in the new version on Mach 3, especially for the advanced users. He expressed interest in looking into the charge pump race condition he described.
Look for parallel port support to eventually go away, it is just too hard to do in the Win 7 64 bit world. External motion controllers are the way forward, smoothstepper being one example of this. He spoke of a low cost ethernet connected external motion controller, circa $30, as being a promising desired external motion controller soloution. The existing PP driver that we all know and love was two man-years in development, and would require a similar level of effort to develop a 64 bit PP driver. OK, so say they do that... but the general trend was to depreciate PP interfaces on PC's so they payback is not likely to be there from Artsoft's perspective, which makes sense.
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I've recently setup Mach3's Charge Pump feature and do not have "charge pump on in estop" checked and get the following behavior that I want.
Mach3 not running, no charge pump 12.5Khz output on BOB
Mach3 running, Reset flashing, no 12.5Khz output
Mach3 running, Reset clicked, solid Reset button, got 12.5Kz output on BOB
Mach3 running, Reset clicked, Reset button flashing, no 12.5Khz output on BOB
Hit eStop , Reset button flashes, no 12.5Khz output on BOB
I noticed that the Gecko G540 drive's charge pump feature expects a 10Khz input on pin 16 of the DB25 port. Mach3 puts out a 12.5Khz Charge Pump square wave. You might check with GeckoDrive and ask them what the frequency "slack" is on the G540.