Machsupport Forum

Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: kolias on January 03, 2014, 02:04:18 PM

Title: Motors are not Working
Post by: kolias on January 03, 2014, 02:04:18 PM
Doing something wrong here I guess. Yesterday before configuring Mach3 I applied power to the stepper motors & BOB and I heart the thump on the motors indicating power was applied

Today I configure Mach3 but the motors are dead. The DRO's are moving and the diagnostic screen has no lights lit but all limits / E-Stop are working and when I press a limit switch the light lights on the diagnostic screen.

I configure all 4 motors on the motor tunning page with 4060 Steps, Velocity 100 and Acceleration 10. No motor movement and no power to the motors

The motor drivers are Keling KL-4030. They have two enable contacts (+5V and ENA) and the manual says they should be unconnected (enabled). There is also a dip switch with a setting for 0 (half current and 1 (full current). I was told this dip switch to be in the 0 position

Any help?
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: Hood on January 03, 2014, 05:26:24 PM
if you attach your xml I will have a look.
Hood
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: kolias on January 03, 2014, 05:40:46 PM
Thank you Hood, please find attached my xml
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: Hood on January 03, 2014, 07:25:35 PM
Had a quick look and dont see anything wrong in the xml.
Have a look on Diagnostics page and see what the Frequency box says.
Check you have the correct port address entered.
Hood
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: kolias on January 03, 2014, 08:11:13 PM
Just came back from the garage and I think I found my problem. The motor drivers wiring was not connected to the BOB, that is the DIR +/- and Pulse +/-. Working now to finalize the connections

Main problem is that my control cabinet turned out too small. It is the 1st time I use DIN rails & cable ducts and the cabinet at 15" wide x 16" high x 7" deep turned out too small to house 2 PSU, 4 motor drivers, 2 plug in transformers, 2 BOB's etc. Guess I will now for the next time

Thank you Hood for your time, tomorrow I will start it again and hopefully all will be fine
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: Hood on January 04, 2014, 03:39:14 AM
hopefully you found the problem :)

Hood
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: kolias on January 04, 2014, 07:14:51 PM
No luck today, finished the wiring job and thought that was the problem but no, motors still dead. Reading thru the manual now to see if I missed any step.

Checked the voltage at each motor and its 36.4. There are no lights lit on the Diagnostic screen and I don’t know if I should have lights ON in there or not. Limits and E-Stop works – when I press any, Mach3 reacts and have to press the Reset

The Frequency Box on the Diagnostic page says 25340. The power ON lights are all ON on the BOB and C41 which controls the spindle. Spindle is not working either but I will get to it later (but works thru the VFD)

At this point I don’t know if it’s a wiring or Mach3 config problem. Any guidance will be appreciated
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: Hood on January 04, 2014, 09:09:13 PM
Best thing would be to break out the scope if you have one, if not a volt meter. Test the Dir pins direct at the port. You will likely have to change the active state of your limits and E-Stop as you have the cable unpluggesd. If a voltmeter test between your Dir pins and pin 25 and see if the voltage swings between 0 and 5v as you jog back and forth. Test all of them and see.
 You can also test the step pins but depending on your  velocity and active state you will not see much of a change, it will either be 0 at rest and probably a volt or so when rapid or 5v when at rest and 4v or so when doing the rapid.

If all that checks out then move onto the end of the cable and try again.
Hood
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: kolias on January 05, 2014, 09:53:19 AM
Thank you Hood, my Internet was out since last night

I dont think I can do what your saying because the C10 BOB manual says "if the board is not connected to the PC, the outputs will be deactivated". I will do this at each driver and then check the printer port to see if there is continuity from one end of the cable to the other.

Also as per attached, Keling says to leave alone the enable pins on each driver. Perhaps I will try to put +5VDC and GND to these pins to see what happens? (this will be my last step)

Is there any way to check the wiring on the motors without undoing the motor cables? Like removing the connections from each driver and using a voltmeter see if my wires are connected ok? I doubt very much that a have done anything wrong on these cables but as a last resort

Another item to check is the printer plug of the PC. This is a used PC I got and never checked if the printer plug at the back of the PC is working. How can I find out if this plug is working?

Should the lights on the Diagnostic screen be ON or OFF under normal conditions?
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: Hood on January 05, 2014, 11:16:40 AM
I am saying to remove the cable and test with the volt meter at the port. The port will still output just you wont have anything connected except the volt meter. Your motors etc wont run but you will see changing voltages on your meter, assuming the port is working.
As I said you will likely have to change the active state of limits and E-Stop for you to be able to take Mach out of Reset when you have the cable disconnected from the port, that will only take a few seconds to do and you can change back once everything gets hooked up again.

Regarding the Enables, they are not used to enable these drives, the 5v applied disables them, not a great way of doing things as normally you would take away the 5v to disable and apply to enable, it is done that way for safety.

Lights on Diagnostics page? I am not sure which ones you mean but can you also tell me, do you have a frequency and time in int on Diagnostics page and is it a 32bit operating system you are using?
Hood
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: kolias on January 05, 2014, 11:59:36 AM
Sorry Hood but still not clear with the printer port; you are saying to disconnect the printer cable from the PC end I will assume and that is what I will do next.

I have a 32 bit Windows system. On the Diagnostic screen I mean all the lights at the right where there are 4 columns, should these lights be ON or OFF under normal operation?

So far I checked the system printer port which is set to ECP at address 378 and the system says no conflicts. I also run the Driver test file from Mach3 and its working fine. Machine is not connected to the ball screws and the motors are very hard to turn by hand. The Kernel on the diagnostic page is now at 25K +, I did not right down the exact number. I checked in one driver the Direction pins and the voltage changes when I jogged that axis – so I do have the signal voltage.

Another item I'm not sure is the C10 BOB has a lot of jumper settings: I set the motor pins to be as an output instead as an input thinking that Mach3 sends signals to these pins to control the motors. Also I have set the pins for pullup or pull down to pull down

I will now go and test the printer port

Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: Hood on January 05, 2014, 01:06:26 PM
The port LEDs on the diagnostics page are really a mystery as to what they represent, certainly are to me anyway :)

If you are seeing the voltage change at the drives then at least that signal is getting to them, or were you meaning the breakout side ? Either way there is no need to disconnect the port cable, it is just normally you would start with the closest to Mach and work your way out but as you found things ok further out then no problem.

Regarding the CNC4PC stuff, afraid I have never used it so cant help there.
Hood
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: kolias on January 05, 2014, 01:33:58 PM
ok Hood I disconnected the printer cable from the back of the PC and with Mach3 running and power ON to the BOB I only get voltage change on pin 3 which is the X axis direction pin. All other pins show no voltage change. Then I checked the continuity between each end of the printer cable and I do have continuity on each pin. To me this indicates that the printer cable is good but I cant figure out why I only get voltage on the X axis direction pin

Your ideas as to where I should look for this problem are welcomed, in the mean time I will double check the Mach3 configuration again and my wiring

Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: Hood on January 05, 2014, 02:27:56 PM
You dont need the power to the BOB at all if you have the cable disconnected and are checking directly at the port. If you do not have voltage swings on each axis direction pin when you jog that axis back and forth then you have a problem either in Mach or the computer port itself. Remember to make sure you are checking the correct pins to a Gnd pin and are not checking them back to front. I think the Mach manual shows the orientation of the computers port rather than the cables, so have a look at that.
Hood
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: kolias on January 05, 2014, 02:53:04 PM
I will double check the pins Hood, I used an orientation of the computer port from Probotix which I had. My next step is to uninstall Mach3 and re install because when I installed Mach3 it was not connected to anything. Perhaps its waste of time but at least its one more step towards solving the problem
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: kolias on January 06, 2014, 09:54:54 AM
Finally I resolved the problem and for the other forum members if they have a similar situation this is what I did.

The C10 BOB has among others a DIP switch which controls if the Inputs / Outputs 2-9 should have the COM terminal to GND or +5VDC. My logic was since everything else was checked ok, the signals wiring to the motors perhaps needed the +5V to tell the motors what to do. So I gambled and set the DIP switch to +5V and now the motors came to life.

Hey Hood, thanks for your help very much but since I re installed Mach3, I now have this light on the main screen which says "Abnormal Condition" It's located just below the DRO's. What it means and how can I remove it?
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: Hood on January 06, 2014, 01:11:27 PM
Glad you got it going :)
The Abnormal Condition LED/Button is a real PITA as far as I am concerned and it will tell you when some things are different from your normal setup. It could be quite a few different things but really none are of concern, most likely its telling you you are not referenced or something like that. If you click on it you should get a message telling you what the abnormal condition is and you can then double click or maybe there is an OK, and that will set the condition as normal. Reason I am not sure is I removed it from my screenset maybe 6 or 7 years ago as I thought it pointless.
Hood
Title: Re: Motors are not Working
Post by: kolias on January 06, 2014, 01:33:01 PM
I will take care of it Hood, thanks so much