Hi Guys,

I have recently purchased  a miniature  3 axis CNC milling machine and I have not yet been able to use it. L
I have got to a stage where Mach3 communicates with the 3 axis stepper motor controller and the stepper motors make a ticking noise but the do not turn and kind of stay in one place while ticking.
I have done the wiring per instruction  and I have attached a copy of my XML file so you can see my software settings.
I have also attached  a photo of the machine which might help.
Here are all the other specs that I have:

-Working area:        300x200x60mm
-Machine material:  6061 aluminium
-Table size:            450x240x20mm
-Motion system:      ACME lead screw and hardened linear rail 4mm
-Rapid speed:         2m/min
-Cutting material:      Plastic,foam,hard wood, soft wood,circuit board, light aluminium
-1.4 A  1.8 degree 1 step -stepper motors for XYZ
0There are no limit switches on the machine
- I am using 1/8 macro stepping on the card for all axis
- all the stepper motors are connected directly to the leadscrews

The parallel  port setup for my motor controller card is:
PIN   SIGNAL
1   CP4 - 4th axis pulse
2   CP1 - 1st axis pulse
3   CW1 - 1st axis direction
4   CP2 - 2nd axis pulse
5   CW2 - 2nd axis direction
6   CP3 - 3rd axis pulse
7   CW3 - 3rd axis direction

10   DIN1 - switch 1
11   DIN2 - switch 2
12   DIN3 - switch 3
13   DIN4 - switch 4
14   CW4 - 4th axis direction

16   ENA- all axis enable
17   RLY - relay control

18-25   GND - ground


Can somebody please find the fault and reconfigure my XML file so I can just copy and past it and it will work as I am very frustrated after a week of playing with Acceleration and Velocity in Motor turning.
By the way I have calculated steps per unit to be 9600. As I.e. 200 steps in a turn and I have 1/8 step therefore: 200 x 8 = 1600 steps per turn  & have manually measured there to be  6 turns per inch I.e. 1600 x 6 = 9600. I don’t know if my measurements are correct but I know the screw lead is 4mm.

Thanks

Try setting the Pulse width to 6 on the motor tuning page, if that doesnt help try Sherline mode, its on the Ports and Pins main page.
Hood

Oh and if your ballscrews are 4mm pitch then that will be 6.35 turns per inch
Hood

Thanks for the hint Hood.  as the result  I have changed the ptep per unit to 10160. i have also activated the sherline mode but on my motor turning page the maximum for step or direction pulse is 5, what should i set them to?
Still no luck

PS. I have set port 16 which is EN!(Enable all axis) to Output #1 on Ports and Pins. Maybe that is the problem??!

Yes the enable would be needed, also if you have sherline enabled you do not need to set a pulse width. However I would at first try without setting the  Sherline mode. As for the 5 being max for pulse width I think you must be using an old version of Mach as if I remember correctly it can be set higher than 5 now.

Hood

Cheers... Finally got it to turn!! I cant believe it's doing the road runner in front of my eyes

Baghali,

So was it the enable that was the problem? My problem sounds similar.

Hollye