Messages

371

SmoothStepper USB / Re: Smoothstepper - Endless Loop

« on: October 18, 2011, 06:39:10 PM »

Powering the SS from either USB or a separate 5v power supply won't cause any problems. That's the way I've done it on a couple installs, and it works fine. USB is the simplest, but a stand alone little 5v power supply works, too. I've actually never powered the SS thru the 26 pin cable from my PMDX boards!! I forgot you could do that! I have my SS mounted inside the computer case with headers to the back plane and I use normal DB25 cables to the machine control box and thus the PMDX-126. I can, if I want to test for some reason, switch to parallel port and it's just a matter of swapping cables on the computer end and making sure Mach3 is setup right.

372

SmoothStepper USB / Re: Turning on the lights trips a limit switch

« on: October 18, 2011, 01:14:54 PM »

Might be noise. Go in Mach Plugin Control, SS plugin, and put some debounce (or whatever it's called, lower right of the window) in Home and Limits. Try 250 or 500 or something and see if it fixes it.

I'm not sure how much is "too much", but if you go too high, it'll have the opposite effect and the switch will stay the other way!!

373

SmoothStepper USB / Re: "time out error getting data" wtf

« on: August 19, 2011, 05:57:44 PM »

The red light should be "blinky fast". If it's not "blinky fast", the SS us stuck/has lost communication with the PC. Unplug the SS, plug it in again, start Mach3 again. Should be OK now.

The red LED isn't blinking any code, and there are no "code books" for this.

The hopelessly out of date SS manual on the Warp9 web site explains the LED activity. Red should be solid until you load Mach, which is loading the SS plugin, which in turn loads the firmware into the SS. The SS firmware loads every time, it's not stored onboard the SS when it's powered down. Once the firmware is loaded and communication is established, the red LED blinks. If you're running and the red LED STOPS blinking, and you only have blue and green LED's, it's stuck and has lost communication, as I said above. The losing communication is the issue that all the talk has been about for years, regarding grounding, external power for 5v, powered USB hub, removing a resistor and capacitor on the SS, noise getting into the system, all sorts of stuff. The plugin version can even change this!! And as Jeff has pointed out, the Mach3/SS config setup.

It's frustrating when this  happens, but I've personally never had it happen when just running along making chips.

374

SmoothStepper USB / Re: "time out error getting data" wtf

« on: August 19, 2011, 03:48:04 PM »

Back to where you were at the start of this thread? How so? Blue and green light on the SS, or do you just mean losing money?

For anyone to suggest a solution, they have to know what's happening. Like what do you mean Windows 7 was acting like it wanted to update or something? Or "it might have been looking for the smoothstepper."

Did you do the suggested SS fixes, separate 5v power, USB hub, better/different USB cable, Jeff's superbe document on setting up the SS?

375

SmoothStepper USB / Re: "time out error getting data" wtf

« on: August 05, 2011, 04:37:55 PM »

Before your second post, I KNEW you had a smoothstepper, that's the error you get trying to restart Mach3 after the SS has lost communication.

The SS lost communication with the computer. It happens and there have been many sort-of solutions here and on the warp9 forum. Look there or here for possible things to try, or perhaps one of the experts will pop in and point you. I don't remember where all this talk took place. It was mostly to do with grounding, but also powering the SS from an external 5v power supply, plugging the SS into a powered USB hub instead of the pc directly, and other solutions, none of which were really definitive!! Search around and try some of these things, different USB cable, power from external 5v supply, USB hub, cutting the outside metal shield off the SS end of the USB cable (carefully!!), unsoldering some stuff on the SS itself (I never went there!)

376

SmoothStepper USB / Re: "time out error getting data" wtf

« on: August 05, 2011, 03:58:05 PM »

Unplug the SS and plug it in again, restart Mach, should do it.

377

SmoothStepper USB / Re: Smooth Stepper Driver Problem

« on: June 11, 2011, 06:55:18 AM »

You DO have the USB driver installed, correct?

Take a look here and scroll down to the SmoothStepper section and perhaps read thru the installation document, it's great.

http://www.soigeneris.com/Documentation-content.aspx

378

SmoothStepper USB / Re: spindle gone wild part 2

« on: May 10, 2011, 07:58:30 AM »

Yeah, I'd say reverse Active High on the STEP pin, not the DIR pin.

379

SmoothStepper USB / Re: spindles gone wild!!!!!

« on: May 06, 2011, 10:49:13 AM »

I'm not certain, but I think you need a PWM spindle controller. Like a CNC4PC C41 or something. If you want to use Step/Dir spindle control, your C32 might do that, but not PWM. I could be wrong, probably AM!!!

Tom

380

SmoothStepper USB / Re: spindles gone wild!!!!!

« on: May 06, 2011, 07:25:28 AM »

You might post on the Yahoo group, it seems to garner more attention from the actual Mach folks.

That said, I have a SS and PMDX 126/107 and my spindle works fine. Not sure what I can do to help, info wise.

I use SS 17bd and Mach dev rev 035. My SS pulldown has PWM set to 2000. Ports & Pins Spindle Setup has PWM at 20 and checked like yours.

Spindle tuning is: Steps per - 1000, Velocity - 14940, Acceleration - 5000, Step Pulse 3 Dir Pulse 5

I can't seem to attach anything here anymore, or I'd attach a screen shot of my spindle tuning and my XML.

If there's something else you'd like me to look at, fire away, but I'll be gone most of today here in US Central time.

OH, and I just checked as I don't use a C32, but a brief glance at the manual makes it seem a C32 is only step/dir spindle control, so unless you're using something else to control the PWM spindle, this could be the problem. Of course, I could be way off base here as, like I said, I don't OWN a CNC4PC BOB.

Tom