Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 with C-10 BOB... on a lathe?

« on: June 25, 2016, 12:40:35 AM »

Um, yes. Not to sound rude or anything, but I'm not quite that green.

I'm sorry, I had interpreted your first post as needing to add a ground. When you then mentioned that I should remove the COM wires, I assumed you meant "... and move them to another terminal". That kept me confused for a bit longer.

I removed the entirely, and it's now working. The steppers are responding nicely, and I believe I can now start setting the rest of the parameters.

Thank you for your help.
Doc.

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 with C-10 BOB... on a lathe?

« on: June 24, 2016, 08:17:04 PM »

I've had it jumpered. You can see the short loop at the power terminals at the upper right of my photo.

What I'm not getting is where to add the ground, if do in fact need one, between the driver(s) and BOB. Or, if it's something besides a ground, just exactly how to wire the BOB to the drivers.

Doc.

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 with C-10 BOB... on a lathe?

« on: June 24, 2016, 07:18:13 PM »

That does kind of make sense, thank you.

The unknown connection is "Fault", and is apparently only used to light an indicator if there's an overcurrent condition.

"HM" is "Home", the description from the manual put it as:

"/HOME - used to indicate the HOME step. The home step is a reference indicator
that occurs once every electrical cycle ( occurs every (2 * microsteps)
pulses). This may be used to qualify a home limit sensor. Example: halfstep
operation; microsteps = 2 so home occurs every (2 * 2) = 4 pulses."

I suppose I could see that as an "enable", but I don't think it is.

The "Enable" connection on the BOB is, I believe, only for the BOB itself- a connection for something like a key switch or other safety, that allows the board and drivers to be powered up, but no signals will be sent until the connection to the enable pin is closed.

I may be wrong on that, but that's what I get from reading the manuals.

Doc.

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 with C-10 BOB... on a lathe?

« on: June 24, 2016, 03:03:30 PM »

Please forgive my ignorance, as I'm not very electrically inclined. I have a full size photo of the wired BOB and drivers here. I'm still deep in the building stage so for the moment, the limit switches (terminals 12/5V at the right) are simply jumpered, and I have a simple toggle switch temporarily wired to emulate the E-stop.

Where would I put that ground?

Doc.

5

General Mach Discussion / Mach 3 with C-10 BOB... on a lathe?

« on: June 23, 2016, 07:15:13 PM »

I'm very new at CNC in general and Mach 3 in particular, so forgive my ignorance.

I'm working on a lathe conversion (typical steppers-and-ballscrews) and trying to get it to run under Mach 3. I have a pair of MicroKinetics drivers (older, but they work- or so I'm told) connected to a CNC4PC C-10 breakout board.

I have the BOB wired to the drivers exactly like this example (.pdf image) since my drivers show an identical diagram (another .pdf, page 6, left image) as that first images' sample Gecko.

I have the C-10's jumpers set so pins 2-9 are output, and the COM terminals are +5VDC. Both drivers and BOB have good power.

At the moment, the build is still only partly completed, so the steppers are "loose" (not connected to the screws, so I don't have to worry about anything crashing) and the limit switch terminals are just jumpered. I have a simple toggle switch temporarily wired in acting as a makeshift "E-stop".

The C-10 comes with an XML file for it, and choosing that with Mach 3's "Loader" gets me a 4-axis mill window.

Now, the two problems: First and foremost, I'm getting no response from my steppers. Trying the arrow keys and/or Page Up/Page/Down changes the DRO display, but doesn't produce any movement at the steppers.

I'm reasonably certain- but not positive- I have the drivers wired correctly, and I'm assuming the XML has the motor pins properly activated. The E-stop does, in fact, work, and when activated (the switch opened or "off") gives me an alert on the Mach screen and blinks red on the "Reset" button.

I checked the motor configuration, and they agree with my wiring (pins 2-3 and 4-5) on the BOB.

The other problem is simply that it's a mill profile, and I need a lathe profile. Is there a way to... import? Convert?... the C-10 configuration file over to the lathe profiles? Or do I need to somehow figure out how to set the lathe profile configuration setting manually?

Thanks for any help you can provide.
Doc.