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SmoothStepper USB / SmoothStepper fails when extending stepper motor cable.
« on: May 12, 2015, 05:13:50 PM »
I have a Mach3 / SmoothStepper USB freeze / lock up problem.
I have a home build system and are still trying to configure it. The main components consist of a Sieg X2 mill, Stepper motors, Gecko G540 controller, SmoothStepper USB, laptop running
Windows 8 using SmoothStepper's Windows 8 drivers.
I first connected a D9 socket directly to the ends of the stepper motor cables (about 30cm) and connected this to the G540's x-axis port.
This worked fine and I could tune the motors and played with this setup for about 30 minutes.
I then added a standard serial port cable (about 1.8m). This works randomly from 2-30 seconds and then cause SmoothStepper / Mach 3 to lock up. When locked up, SS still have the green
and blued LEDs on solid, but the red heartbeat LED stops flickering and is off.
I think it is the SS board and not Mach 3 becuase I can close and reopen Mach 3 and it will still be broken. But when I close Mach 3, and unplug and reinsert the USB cable (essentially
cutting the SS board's power supply) it works again when I start Mach 3 up.
So my question is: Why should this setup work perfectly for a short stepper motor cable, but fails when I add an extension?
What I have tried up to now is:
1. Tried an older Windows XP 32-bit laptop.
2. Different combinations of grounded / floating USB / SMoothstepper ground relative to controller box and G540 board.
3. Removed the SS board competely from the controller box to put it in a less noisy environment.
4. Configured noise filters on SS configuration in Mach 3.
All with the same result.
I have a multimeter and oscilloscope available for testing if anyone has some theories to test. I also tried configuring SS diagnostics logging, but couldn't figure out if / where logs
are created.
Any suggestions would be welcome. I am really frustrated with just looking at my machine after weeks of hardware kit upgrades and now not being able to even move 1 axis from the PC.
I have a home build system and are still trying to configure it. The main components consist of a Sieg X2 mill, Stepper motors, Gecko G540 controller, SmoothStepper USB, laptop running
Windows 8 using SmoothStepper's Windows 8 drivers.
I first connected a D9 socket directly to the ends of the stepper motor cables (about 30cm) and connected this to the G540's x-axis port.
This worked fine and I could tune the motors and played with this setup for about 30 minutes.
I then added a standard serial port cable (about 1.8m). This works randomly from 2-30 seconds and then cause SmoothStepper / Mach 3 to lock up. When locked up, SS still have the green
and blued LEDs on solid, but the red heartbeat LED stops flickering and is off.
I think it is the SS board and not Mach 3 becuase I can close and reopen Mach 3 and it will still be broken. But when I close Mach 3, and unplug and reinsert the USB cable (essentially
cutting the SS board's power supply) it works again when I start Mach 3 up.
So my question is: Why should this setup work perfectly for a short stepper motor cable, but fails when I add an extension?
What I have tried up to now is:
1. Tried an older Windows XP 32-bit laptop.
2. Different combinations of grounded / floating USB / SMoothstepper ground relative to controller box and G540 board.
3. Removed the SS board competely from the controller box to put it in a less noisy environment.
4. Configured noise filters on SS configuration in Mach 3.
All with the same result.
I have a multimeter and oscilloscope available for testing if anyone has some theories to test. I also tried configuring SS diagnostics logging, but couldn't figure out if / where logs
are created.
Any suggestions would be welcome. I am really frustrated with just looking at my machine after weeks of hardware kit upgrades and now not being able to even move 1 axis from the PC.