Messages

5971

General Mach Discussion / Re: Y-Axis Sticking

« on: March 29, 2011, 04:08:48 AM »

When measuring the port pins - pins 18 to 25 are ground so the multimeter negative lead should be connected to one of these pins then the positive lead to a direction pin (generally from the group pins 2 to 9)

Don't know if this helps.

Tweakie.

5972

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: The Laser Project.

« on: March 29, 2011, 03:55:39 AM »

Have you a design made up for the clock arms? You realize you gotta make some fancy dancy frame for it, too, don't you?

Oh dear, I hadn't realised that Sam, thought I could get away with the standard quartz mechanism hands and a block of Teak. 

Tweakie.

5973

General Mach Discussion / Re: help please

« on: March 29, 2011, 03:50:09 AM »

Could be.
Look to see if 'Safe Z' under the config tab is enabled.

Tweakie.

5974

General Mach Discussion / Re: Z limit Switch with a touch pad

« on: March 29, 2011, 03:45:00 AM »

Glad to hear you got it sorted.

Tweakie.

5975

General Mach Discussion / Re: Y-Axis Sticking

« on: March 28, 2011, 12:13:49 PM »

The printer port LPT should be set to ECP.

I updated my earlier post to add more info.

Tweakie.

5976

General Mach Discussion / Re: Y-Axis Sticking

« on: March 28, 2011, 11:55:36 AM »

Grasping at straws here now.

Have you tried changing the state of the step pin active high / active low in motor outputs ?

There is another issue which keeps causing problems mainly with new computers in that some parallel ports now output 3.3Volts TTL instead of the old standard 5Volts TTL. Some driver circuits / boards will not work reliably with 3.3Volt TTL and some will just not work at all.
If you have a voltmeter then it may be an idea to measure the voltage on a direction pin whilst jogging the axis in one direction then in the other. This voltage should be approx 5V in one direction and approx 0V in the other direction. The voltage on step pins cannot be measured in this way only the voltage on a direction pin.
If  you find the voltage to be approx 3.3V this could explain why the setup worked OK with your old computer but now does not work well.
The easiest solution would be to fit a PCI parallel port card (assuming you have a free PCI slot) which does output the full 5Volts TTL signals.


Tweakie.

5977

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Motion plugin for virtual hardware(for tests) - lets share our knowledge

« on: March 28, 2011, 11:50:31 AM »

Something you may find interesting.

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,17992.0.html

Tweakie.

5978

General Mach Discussion / Re: Y-Axis Sticking

« on: March 28, 2011, 11:40:47 AM »

Is that steps per inch ?
If it's steps per mm then I think you need to retune your motors from scratch.

Tweakie.

5979

General Mach Discussion / Re: download and install MACH 3

« on: March 28, 2011, 11:36:11 AM »

Also the onboard graphics can be a problem unless you have a seperate PCI graphics card fitted and selected in BIOS.

Tweakie.

5980

General Mach Discussion / Re: Y-Axis Sticking

« on: March 28, 2011, 11:21:03 AM »

Just a thought.

Go to config, ports and pins and put a check in the sherline 1/2 pulse mode box. Then try.

Tweakie.