Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: How to debug a hardware problem?

« on: January 19, 2012, 09:22:12 PM »

Hood,
Thanks for the advice. After spending hours rewiring the mill I was in a hurry to test it before dinner. I had failed to connect the PP cable! That's the good news. The bad news is that one of my solder joints in a db9 connector was bad and I ended up toasting my Y-axis stepper driver:( Live and learn. I've ordered a new one and decided to replace my breakout board with an isolated one from Probotix while I'm at it.

2

General Mach Discussion / How to debug a hardware problem?

« on: January 16, 2012, 10:44:42 PM »

Last weekend I put limit switches on my X2 clone. While I was at it, I replaced all the stepper motor wiring with shielded cable and put db9 connectors on the cables about 8" from the controller so I can disconnect the controller from the machine when I need to pull the mill out of its cabinet. After I got it all back together, Mach3 shows the DRO's moving but I get no movement on any of the axes. I’m looking for advice on how to troubleshoot the problem.

My controller consists of:
•        (3) SideStep Bi-Polar Stepper Motor Driver
•        PBX-2 Parallel Port Breakout Board
•        24Volt 6.5Amp Switching Power Supply

This controls (3) HT23-260-4 Stepper Motors.

I get red led lights on the breakout board and the driver boards. While I haven’t done it yet, I’m going to do a continuity check on the parallel cable between the PC and the controller. I did disconnect the db9 going to the limit switches to see if that was causing the problem, but the problem continued so that’s not it.

What should I check next and how? Obviously, I need to check the cable between each driver and the female db9, but if it were a cable issue, only that motor would not turn. I’m all ears if you have a suggestion on how to troubleshoot this issue.

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: Y-axis "creep"

« on: December 30, 2011, 10:31:48 AM »

After shutting everything down and rebooting my PC running Mach3, my problem appears to have gone away. It must have been noise coming from somewhere, but I don't know where. I'll pay attention to see if it recurs.

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: Y-axis "creep"

« on: December 27, 2011, 10:10:36 AM »

I have had this problem in the past. Solved it by changing the active hi/lo on the affected drive.

Neptune

I assume you did this in Config, Ports and Pins?

5

General Mach Discussion / Y-axis "creep"

« on: December 24, 2011, 10:59:28 PM »

I'm using Mach3 to run my X2 mini-mill. I recently replaced the wires going to the steppers with shielded cable and made sure to ground the shielding. The other evening, I took the steppers off and adjusted the backlash on both the x and y axis. I was able to reduce the backlash from .011" to .004". At the same time, I tried to take as much slop out of the saddle by tightening up the friction screws. I could still turn the feed screws by had, so I don't think I have anything too tight.

When I went to measure the backlash, I noticed that the y-axis was "creeping" at a rate of 0.001" per second. If I manually jogged the machine or entered commands manually, it seemed to go away. However, if I shut down Mach and the restart it, I get the creep again. The motor is humming when this happens.

Any ideas as to what caused this or how I can get rid of it?
-Capel