Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: x axis mounted and working, y & z stalling!

« on: February 05, 2007, 04:25:57 AM »

Hey Hood,
By that are you referring to the power feed to the PCI card? If so then there isn't a power cable directly to the card, it gets its power through the connection slot in the mother board. I have noticed that there is power coming down the leed from the parallel port to the machine as some of the LED's in the machine are slightly on even when the machine is off (that probably means nothing!). Should be able to test on another person computer later this week, fingers crossed!
Steve

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: x axis mounted and working, y & z stalling!

« on: February 02, 2007, 01:40:22 PM »

Hello Hood,
I didn't really get anything in the way of a manual with the box, all I know is that the steppers are DCNC 57-061-01 (1Nm), The drivers and interface are 2.1amp, it has a ring core module 225VA and 45V, 12V and 5V DC (5amp module) according to the description on ebay.
Brett has been in contact and said it might be my parallel port instalation, I think I'll try the machine on a friends PC to see if that solves the problem.
Thanks for the leed, I'll drop Jacko a line to see what happened with his machine.
Thanks for the help,
Steve

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: x axis mounted and working, y & z stalling!

« on: February 01, 2007, 11:47:06 AM »

Hi Hood,
I didn't realise there were lots of people from the UK, Sorry.
I did get it from them, but they have tried to be helpful. I've only recently joined the Forum, I've mainly been going to marchant dice for help since I've had it. I thought it might have been a problem at my end with my parallel port instalation but the computer recognises it and says the drivers are up and running. The port address is set to that in my device manager as it has been since I had the machine. Thought I'd try you guys as i've hit a bit of a wall and only really want to play with my machine. I think Kevin (marchant) is running an older version of mach2, as he sent me a screen shot of his pin setup and it didn't look like the latest version of mach2 that I was running. Should I try that? or should I try getting in contact with the company?
Steve

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: x axis mounted and working, y & z stalling!

« on: January 31, 2007, 12:13:28 PM »

Hello,
Thank you for the try chip, but that port address doesn't communicate with my parallel port. When I bought my dell 5150 in March, it came without a parallel port. When I bought the driver box, it came with parallel port connections (I didn't realise as I was new to cnc!). So I had to install one in my new computer, hence the odd port address. Could that be the problem?
Hey Brian, I've been trying to get the box working since april and the company who sold it to me has tried to be helpful, but I wouldn't want to cause them any trouble by naming and shaming. I'm based in the UK and I'm guessing that most of the guys using the forum are based in the US and are probably unlikely to buy from the same place.
I think I've already tried it in just sherline mode, as I've been looking at past posts on the forum to try and find similar problems. I'll give it a go again...
Thanks guys,
Steve

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: x axis mounted and working, y & z stalling!

« on: January 29, 2007, 01:12:19 PM »

doh!

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: x axis mounted and working, y & z stalling!

« on: January 29, 2007, 01:11:49 PM »

Hello,
I've had a go at the motor tuning, reduced it right down but had no joy. Thanks for taking the time to look at my problem guys!
the mach2 xml is posted earlier, please find attached the xml for mach3.
Steve

7

General Mach Discussion / Re: x axis mounted and working, y & z stalling!

« on: January 27, 2007, 11:38:29 AM »

I'm really confused now!
It appears that I can only control the x axis with mach2 and only control the y axis with mach3! Everything else stalls pending on which program I use. Anybody got any ideas?
I've made sure that all the axis are enabled and all the axis are set to port 1 as there is no port 2. I really don't know what to do now.
Steve

8

General Mach Discussion / Re: x axis mounted and working, y & z stalling!

« on: January 24, 2007, 01:26:03 PM »

ok,
I've downloaded mach3, set up my pins for the steppers and put in the address of the parallel port. Now nothing works. Are you sure that you can have mach2 & 3 on the computer at the same time? I'm not using them at the same time. Is the there anything else I need to input re configuration other than what I've already mentioned?
Steve

9

General Mach Discussion / Re: x axis mounted and working, y & z stalling!

« on: January 19, 2007, 04:19:11 PM »

Cool,
Thank you Bloy! At least I can find out this solves my problem!

10

General Mach Discussion / Re: x axis mounted and working, y & z stalling!

« on: January 19, 2007, 12:33:53 PM »

hello,
I'm affraid I haven't bought a copy of mach, I was going to buy once I had it up and running. Are the downloads all demo until you activate them, or is that only available on mach2? If not then I'll just have to plug at mach2 until I have the money for mach3...
thanks for the time,
Steve