Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: tamathumper on September 29, 2007, 05:38:28 PM
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Hello all. My router table is finished and ready to go! I have the controller card installed, Mach3 (and TurboCNC as a backup) both trying to get it to come to life, but there's no joy!
My controller card needs pins 8, 9, and 14 to be low to "activate" the three axes, and it steps/dirs with 2-3, 4-5, and 6-7 which seems pretty standard.
As a troubleshooter, I have a great little program that shows every pin of my LPT port and lets me toggle it high or low by clicking on it. If you'd like it, it's available at http://www.geekhideout.com/parmon.shtml.
By doing so I can enable each axis individually, change its direction, and step the motor attached to it.
What I CANNOT do is get Mach3 (or TurboCNC) to activate the axes and step/dir them. No matter WHAT I enter into the configs... I've been through the Mach tutorial five times and I've swapped the Active Low settings for grins, and and and - no joy :(
What the heck could I be doing wrong?
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Do you have the correct port address set? Do you have the correct port number in the Motor Outputs page for each axis?
Hood
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Thank you for responding. Yes, I have the proper port number (with the proper address per Device Manager) and I have the proper pin numbers on each screen, including for X, Y, Z, Enable 1, Enable 2, and Enable 3, and I have double-checked all of the Active Low settings (as well as toggling them in an attempt to get them to work.)
I changed the parallel port from Bidirectional to ECP with no effect. Some forums say to use SPP but I don't have that as an option...
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Hi, Tamathumper
Are you checking for Low/High at the Stepper board ?
Check your Cable, Are pin's 1 to 1, 2 to 2 & so-on to 25, 25, Could be your using a Serial Cable and not a Printer extender cable ?
Some printer cards, cables and cnc boards don't support/use all the same Gnd pins 18 through 25, Thy just use a couple of them.
Check that you have a good Gnd from the computer and your cnc board.
I've seen these a couple of times
Hope this Helps, Chip
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Why are you using the Axis enable - they should be on anyway. On my drive cards each axis can be turned on or off by switching a switch on the card, or connecting an external signal to an input.
Switch the axis on at the card and leave it on - it has to be on anyway. I happen to have my external connections to switches on the control box so I can turn each axis on and off manually if I need to ( I have a lathe with a milling head - so I turn the milling axis off so power does not go through the stepper all the time).
You should find that when you attach Mach3, it will work. You are just making things complicated.
I cannot remember if Mach3 automatically puts out an enable signal on the Enable pins or not. You would have to tell Mach 3 which pins you are using as enable pins anyway - on the Ports and Pins config if you wanted to use them.
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Has a similar problem. Motors ran using other software but could not get Mach 3 to run the motors until I activated the "Gecko half step mode" on the Config->Motor and pins tab
Hope this helps ::)
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conroydb
Are you meaning the Sherline Half Pulse mode?
Hood
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Hi, Tamathumper
Are you checking for Low/High at the Stepper board ?
Check your Cable, Are pin's 1 to 1, 2 to 2 & so-on to 25, 25, Could be your using a Serial Cable and not a Printer extender cable ?
Some printer cards, cables and cnc boards don't support/use all the same Gnd pins 18 through 25, Thy just use a couple of them.
Check that you have a good Gnd from the computer and your cnc board.
I've seen these a couple of times
Hope this Helps, Chip
Thank you very much Chip. I appreciate your tips! When I run Mach, I can see the hi/lo state of each pin, and they are not what I am assuming Mach should set them to - that is the real problem I think.
If I click on each pin to change its hi/lo state, I can force each axis to enable/disable, I can change the direction of each axis, and I can force each axis to make a step. Because I am able to do this from the computer, I am assuming that the cable is good and that the grounds are appropriate.
First and foremost, I just can't understand why Mach is not setting the pins automatically to enable the axes...
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Why are you using the Axis enable - they should be on anyway. On my drive cards each axis can be turned on or off by switching a switch on the card, or connecting an external signal to an input.
Switch the axis on at the card and leave it on - it has to be on anyway. I happen to have my external connections to switches on the control box so I can turn each axis on and off manually if I need to ( I have a lathe with a milling head - so I turn the milling axis off so power does not go through the stepper all the time).
You should find that when you attach Mach3, it will work. You are just making things complicated.
I cannot remember if Mach3 automatically puts out an enable signal on the Enable pins or not. You would have to tell Mach 3 which pins you are using as enable pins anyway - on the Ports and Pins config if you wanted to use them.
Jim,
Thank you very much for responding! I certainly tried for a day or two to get the axes configured and working before I even attempted to use the enable features of Mach (I didn't know they existed.) The problem is, Mach does not put those pins low by itself, and it also does not put those pins low even when I specify them in the setup. Without those pins being low, the axes are not enabled on the machine, so I just set them as part of yesterday's troubleshooting. I'd love to keep it simple, in fact Simplicity is one of my mantras, but in the process of troubleshooting why Mach will not set the pins appropriately and drive my motors, I have had to try all avenues.
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Sherline Half Pulse mode? What would this do?
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Hi, Tamathumper
I tryed the parallel port program your using.
It is consistently interfering with Mach hear, Shut it down.
The red led's in mach only show the state on or off.
Thy have no relationship whether the output is low or high, In Ports & Pins, Active High or Low is set for pin's.
Thanks, Chip
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One of the fellas on CNCZone remote controlled my PC this afternoon, and he found that the Mach3 driver was not loading - I believe it was being interfered with (during install) by a bi-directional software (printer, Canon MP390) that I had since uninstalled.
Once we ran DriverTest it reinstalled the driver, I rebooted, and MAGIC HAPPENED! :D
Then my Z axis broke. :(
Ah well, that'll teach me to build an MDF router !
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Well - at least you saw something move - perhaps not how you intended, but it's a start.
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Yes, followed by an immediate stop. :D
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I also had some issues and still have.
I am using a breakout board from cnc4pc "c11."
There is a lack of background info about this board, when then machine was all up and running all the output pins were lit up so my machine didn't work.
I disabled all the pins in Mach yet there they were still all lit up.
Playing around with the printer address in windows i managed to get all the pin leds to go out.
I then set one axis and it worked.
I have had the problem come back so it doesn't work again.
I am waiting on a new pc which i will be running Mach on so i am hoping it is the PC printer port.
The current Pc is the usual full of junk type machine the new one will be Mach only.
HTH
Phil_H
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The standard printer port address for an IBM PC - which is what PCs are supposed to be - is LPT1 - &H378. LPT2 if you are lucky enough to have that fitted is address &H278.
The output lines 2 to 9 which Art uses for stepper motor board drivers is address &H378, the 5 input lines - pins (note the order)15,13,12,10,9 are bits 3 to 7 of address &H379, and the 2nd 4 outputs, pins 0,14,16,17 are the first four bits of address &H37A.
If you disconnect your breakout board from the lathe/mill, you should be able to set the correct address, and then test the output at each pin with a voltmeter. You can use Mach3 to address each line individually (on the ports and pins page). Go to the output page and select M3 and allocate it to a pin, starting at 0 and working up the output pin numbers, using M3 and M5 command to turn the pin on and off. See if you have a voltage change on the particular pin.
If you detect the change then you board is OK. Don't forget - most driver cards etc use 0volts as the 'on' command - i.e. that is active low in Mach3.
As an alternative you could peek or poke data to the addresses to test them - but using Mach3 is better.
As far as you machine is concerned, ny computer that I am using now is also full of junk, but I have a copy of Mach3 on it. I had to make sure the driver was functioning - see the tutorial video, and it works OK. I do all my planning and programming on this one, then transfer the GCode on a stick memory to my workshop computer - a Toshiba lap top. All you need do is make sure that as much of the background junk is turned off as possible and it should be able to run Mach3.
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Hi Jim i hope that you are addressing Tamathumpers problem as i am unsure whether i have a Mach problem or a PC problem, until i am sure i will keep quiet about it.
I don't want to hijack the thread. i have started one about printer setting in the bios.
Regards
Phil_H
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Hijack away Phil, I'm good to go!
I did a whole bunch of tuning tonight, getting my acceleration and velocity settings as fast as possible without binding or missing steps. I got the Z axis to 60-65 and the X and Y axes to 65-70.
I think I did the math right on the steps per unit, and I did it three times just to be certain, but oddly enough the DRO seems to denote 10 units for only 5 inches of travel... Odd. ;D