Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...

« on: March 16, 2010, 05:46:47 PM »

Thats exactly what it was  pin 6 was step 7 is dir.

So I grabbed an old lpt cable and ran to radioshack to grab a sub d 25pin end.

Made the cross over cable.

Pin 7 converts to pin 6 and pin 8 converts to pin 7 thru the cross over patch cable.
Setup mach for pin 7 and 8 and bam it all works.

I did test pin 6 on the lpt port on the back of the pc and it is dead.
I also tested to see if the wire that was grounding out was pin 6 and it was.
So pin 6 grounding out the on the KB bracket I made shorted pin 6 on the pc port.

So I now can use the lpt port and not hassle with getting another pci lpt card.

Now I just have to convert the table belt drive over to the new acme drive.

I am really loving the backlash nuts from dumpster cnc along with the other stuff I grabbed from there. ::thumbs up::
Four turn acme screws ae running better than I thought. 350+ ipm rapids.

Thanks for all the help.

Eric

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...

« on: March 16, 2010, 01:34:46 PM »

I had a feeling I got carried away lmao.

Well I am going to make a crossover cable today to jump two other pins over to 6-7 pin.
I will report back once I have made progress.

Eric

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...

« on: March 15, 2010, 08:27:13 PM »

Yea,

I change the pin setup. Z to X and vice versa as far as the pin layouts in mach but the IC's are hardwired 2&3, 4&5 and 6&7.
But then X didnt move but Z did.
In my case when the IC fried I not only had to replace the IC but had to use pin 9 and jump pin 19 to pin 11 on the buffer IC.
So my setup is 2&9 for X axes.

AAAAnnnnnnyways lol   the point I am getting at is I laser cut 1/4 6061 aluminum and made a KB holder plus it doubles as the converter plate to allow me to use the AIO pc stand mounting holes to mount it to an adjustable arm.

Well in my design I didn’t leave enough room for the LPT1 cable to fit so I had to notch away a big chunk of it.

I didn’t notice it till today that I had cut into one of the wires in the connector and that when installed into the back of the pc it touches my KB holder (aluminum).
This would allow it to ground out.
My thinking is this.

I may have fried that pin in the port by it grounding out.
So before I jump into adding a card to replace this one.
Can I not use say pin 8 in Mach and cut 8 and 6 and solder 8 to 6 in the cable?

One prob I have is even if pin 6 is bad, shouldn’t 7 still work?
Or does 6 have to work for 7 to?
Cause if say I make my X axis 2 and 3 (pin 3 is bad on mine) then X will only move one way no matter what arrow I use left or right.
So shouldn’t the Z axis at least move no matter what arrow I press unless pin 7 is bad too?
And or does the first pin have to work in order for the second one to work?
Cause that’s the only difference between the Z pins issues and X example.


Hope I didn’t lose anyone there.

Eric

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...

« on: March 15, 2010, 04:57:16 PM »

They are,

This AIO pc does have one PCI port.

At this point would you just order a PCI parallel card?
or Do you think its worth trying to diagnose the port issue?

Eric

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...

« on: March 15, 2010, 04:39:55 PM »

Well I have an update.

My other machine runs the same controller  (I plan on running my geckos I bought 13 months ago after all is running)
So I hooked that machines laptop up to this machine I am working on and the Z moves fine.
So then I thought well maybe its the cable.
I unplugged the cable from the AIO pc to the laptop and it still runs fine.

So something isnt right with the Port on the AIO pc.
Pinouts in Mach are the same on both Pc's.

So now I am down to trying to figure that out.

Eric

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...

« on: March 15, 2010, 01:28:03 PM »

Oh and the Z stepper is locking at least. just not moving.

Eric

7

General Mach Discussion / Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...

« on: March 15, 2010, 01:26:51 PM »

ACPI to standard pc worked like a champ!

Now I just got to figure out what the hell is going on with my Xylotex board.
Z axis isnt moving. Pins are right IC is warm.
(I had to fix the X IC while back when there dead there cold)

I tried all the typical stuff DRO read moving but nothing on the motor.
Moved the motor over to another axis IC and the Z works there so motor wiring is fine.

Some where between the software and board...

Thanks for your help guys, never had to do that even on my laptop for my other mahcine.

Eric

8

General Mach Discussion / Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...

« on: March 15, 2010, 03:29:49 AM »

Hi Hood,

THe Driver Test prepares, starts and locks the pc up.
How ever before I locks up a do see a few seconds of line info.
Lots of high spikes.

How ever I have not tried this as soon as the pc is turned on.
I would bet its nice and clean for the first half minute after windows comes up.

I have not tried the optomisation steps.
I have never had this kind of issue even with my other cnc machine running on a 900mghz laptop.

I will give it a look. Is the info easy to find?
Do you have any other ideas that I can try as I am doing your other sugestions and or why the system locks up during driver test?

Thanks,
Eric

9

General Mach Discussion / The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...

« on: March 15, 2010, 03:15:03 AM »

Hi,

I am hoping someone can shed some light on what this may be.

I have setup a new pc to run my machine.
I have a P4 2.8ghz 1gig ram AIO pc.
Because of my unique issue I believe replacing my pc is not the only answer.

I noticed right from the jump street the steppers sounded horrible. Very choppy.

When you hold the arrow key down to move an axis the DRO numbers on the screen don’t fly by, they are jumping (cant remember if its .001 or 10thousands increments but its not in step mode) and the steppers are in sync with what the screen is showing. If I tell it to move 1" or w/e it acts just the same as if I held the arrow key down. So I know it's nothing to do with step and jog.

Heres the catch, If I reboot and soon as windows starts loading and i can open mach3 I can run the steppers smooth as silk (perfect) for about 30seconds then something must load i guess and I cant find what it is and the steppers and mach3 start acting choppy, and the keyboard response time is lagged but only in mach3. Jump to notepad all is fine.
I have turned off about every service I can get away with, pulled and disabled my pci wifi card (all in one pc, this one has one full size pci slot in the back) but that didn’t change any thing.

Anyone run across this issue?
BTW I tried the special driver but it didn’t work at all.

Thanks,
Eric