Messages

1

Third party software and hardware support forums. / Re: old sherline CNC + smoothstepper

« on: November 14, 2018, 01:49:45 PM »

Hi Tweakie, thank you very much for your help. I'm gonna look at this in detail.

You mean the smoothstepper is useless with the Max NC controller ?

Here are a couple of pictures of the driver box guts - looks very 90s
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqKY14_A1Vx/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

2

Third party software and hardware support forums. / old sherline CNC + smoothstepper

« on: November 13, 2018, 08:15:34 PM »

Hi everyone,

I just bought a couple of Sherline 4100 lathe and 5410 milling machine from the early 2000s, both CNC with Astrosyn steppers and a big driver box without any brand on it (inside, PCB are marked "Sufi Designs" and electronics look a bit diy), but 4 axis DIN connectors plus a couple of parallel port plugs.
Everything moves pretty well with the old computer included and MAX NC software running on MS Dos.
But I can't get it work with Mach 3 via an Ethernet smoothstepper.

When I try to jog, I barrely ear a tiny noise in the stepper, eventually is rumbles slightly but it can't move.
Could it be  wrong step/dir port address ?
I got the port addresses setting from Max NC, just in case, but don't exactly know what to do with that (it's organized in 3 groups a, B, C, of three addresses each (both decimal and hexa).

BTW, his kind of issue may have been discussed previously, sorry in advance if it has, but the forum search feature doesn't work

Best regards,
Flo