Hello All,
Brand new to Mach 3 & the forum, this being my first post. I'm also new to home cnc, building a 3 axis gantry engraver, router,mill ? Not sure what to call it yet as it isn't done and as of yet capabilities unknown. I am far enough into it to be stuck though.
I purchased off e-bay a 3 axis cnc "kit" from what seems to be a good seller from Korea. I got used (claimed to be tested GOOD) servo drives & matching 200 watt servo motors,breakout board, e-stop switch,noise filter,parallel to BOB cable and wiring instructions + configuring set-up for Mach 3. I won't mention the seller at this time but if you been hunting e-bay for this kind of stuff you can more than likely guess the one.
I had to add a 24 vdc power supply,non fused breaker, MC contactor, surge suppressor for MC coil,on/off switches + had to make the cables from drives to BOB & from drives to servo motor encoders. The drives came with the proper connectors for the cables but cables had been cut with diagonals. Also rounded up a computer,install Mach 3,run driver test (system excellent), configure Mach 3 as per instructions. At this point I'm excited to finally see motors run but NO, can't get them to do anything.
I've triple checked everything according to the instructions I got from the seller and don't see anything I've done wrong. I've searched high and low for info on the BOB and can find nothing,(the seller still shows this same BOB with kits he's still selling,forgot to mention I bought mine a little over 2 years ago, taken me awhile to get this far,job & life keep screwing with my free time ya know?) Anyway the BOB has LED's on each axis at clk & dir inputs. When system is first fired up neither is lit till the first time I jog an axis in Mach 3, then the clk lights and stays lit until system is turned off, the dir lights when jogging one way & off when jogging the other, I don't remember right now rather it lights on + or - jog but it does change state when jogging back & forth so seems as though it's receiving signals from Mach 3. The first time I powered the drives I didn't have encoder cables yet & got the expected error on the drive for encoder failure but since making an encoder cable I have no errors on drive so I take that as a sign I have the cable made correctly.
I e-mailed the seller over a week ago asking for help or advise (I was nice & placed no blame on him even though at this time I think his instructions SUCK or at the very least are incomplete) I have had no reply from the seller. His claim of including the wiring & Mach 3 configuration instructions were a BIG factor I my decision to purchase from him, at this point I'm not a happy camper. Oh and BTW he was kind enough to include a copy of the manual for the drives, INCOMPLETE & part of what is there is in JAPANIEZE !!
Well there you have it. Now you know where I'm at. I've come here to beg for help from someone who has knowledge of how to get Mach 3 to communicate with Panasonic servo drives. I did contact Panasonic & they were kind enough to send me a pdf manual for this series of drive (it's not for the exact model I have but they said the parameters & setting method are the same). I've gone through the parameters & set all to default except for the ones that seem to do with getting them to accept step/direction inputs. I'm not an expert at this stuff and at this point I've done all I can and I'm afraid to "experiment" much more for fear of letting the magic smoke out. Either the input wiring to the drives is wrong or incomplete or more than likely I don't have some parameter setting correct.
The drives are :
Panasonic MSD021A1XX with the matching 200 watt motors with 2500 ppr encoders
If anyone could offer advise on how I can get these drives to work with Mach 3 I would be Very grateful.
Thank You, Rick
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