Hi hood,
Thanks for helping. I'm not exactly sure how to answer the question about how the encoders connect but will try my best. The motor driver has a DB-25 that's used to connect to the encoders from all the motors and there's another DB-25 that's used to connect from the motor driver to the parallel port of a PC. The only indication that I get with respect to the possibility that the encoders are working correctly is that MACH 3 doesn't quit running. If there's a bind and the stepper gets, MACH 3 will quit running and then the reset button (I'm talking about the reset button in the MACH 3 software) needs to be pressed. When I encounter this problem with the z-axis, the machine is running as if there's nothing wrong so this tells me that the encoders are where they expect to be. I hope I've described this well.