Aggie,

The enable loop in Mach is just a switch.  It is designed to provide a signal via one of the pins on the DB25 parralell port connector which in turn will either open or close a circuit.  Definition Active High = when the swich is closed the enable circuit is active (this is the way a switch and a lightbulb in your house works- turn the switch to the ON position and the light turns on.  Active Low = when the switch is open the enable circuit is active- this is the oposite of the previous example- when the switch is in the OFF position, the Lightbulb is lit/On.

Mach is just telling the switch to turn on or turn off- it's up to you to then do with that control circuit whatever it is you need to do to enable your drives.

In MY case I need a 5V signal runing to my Driver board to enable my drives/motors.  I have  5V entering a normall open relay and when I click the reset button on Mach, it sends a signal via the parallel port pin to the relay, closes the relay and allows that 5V to go to the Driver board.  When the Driver board sees the 5V it will then energize and accept commands from the M3 program and start turning the motors.  In YOUR case it sounds like you need a GROUND to enable your drives.  Hopefully from this description you can figure out how to do the wiring so by clciking the reset button it will close a switch (relay) which will then pass the ground through to your driver/interface board.

I hope that makes sense- it is hard to talk about wiring with words-

Sid

Sid,

Understand communication difficulties, should try it from my end: talking about wiring when you don't know the subject and more important when the software didn't fully install??? In my case I have 2 computers, one an older one which I dedicated to MACH3, no internet connection, etc so there would be no way I could get a virus.

After all my problems, install MACH3 on my main computer (newer one) and the enable function works great on this one. Now have to figure out how to get a full install back on the older one. The file size and number of folders were the same for both machines but the old computer only had 705 files where as the new one has 717? Hope this is the problem and not the age of the computer but at least now I know how enable works, etc.

Also found out something weird, once I got the screen showing enable, etc I wasn't getting the voltage to change on pin 14 (enable pin.) I had chosen pin 22 for my ground (halfway on the ground pins 18...25.) But when I chose pin 25 for the ground the voltage changed as enabled changed???

Will get back with everyone on outcome.

aggie

Glad to hear you are making some headway!

Re: the pin/ground enable issue- are you measuring voltage on the cable or on the actual connector coming off the computer?  If your measuring from the cable, you should be aware that some printer cables do not have all 25 pins connected since printers tradtionally do not use all 25 pins to transmit/receive data.  Just a thought.  Good luck!

Sid

Good thought, but was coming directly from computer port.

It's been an interesting day!!!!

Reloaded program on old computer and now the enable function works, problem though, can't get enough voltage to enable the driver. Need 5 volts and only getting 2.6 so packed up everything and moved down to my main computer.

After setting back up, the 5 volt led didn't come back on the interface board (voltage feeds back from x driver board.) While investigating found the x driver board plug on the interface board had come off the pcb tearing off two of the pads. Must have been from all the hooking and unhooking. At this point was closest to throwing the whole project in the garbage and buying a mill but then told myself wouldn't be any fun if it wasn't CNC controlled. So got out the schematic, wired in some jumpers, checked all circuits for continuity and tried again on main computer.

Enable was switching properly but still only getting 2.6 volts, not enough to latch enable. Don't know what happened but then all the sudden started getting 4.4 volts and enabled worked.

Then much to my shock the steppers spin. Not all gravy yet, appears to stop at certain spots in toolpath. Not sure if it's the stepper or what but big day today!!!

Couldn't have got this far without all your help, THANKS!!!!

aggie

Good for you!