CNCEER,
Simplistic explaination:
You have, say 4 Gecko drives in the controller box. So when you turn the controller on the drives provide power to the stepper motors that are hooked up. The motors see power and an electric field is created in the motor windings. Any power going to that motor is only trying to mantain the rotor in position. That power / energy is doing some work so it creates heat ( the stepper gets warm). The more current ... the more heat that will be generated. The current is limited by the drive via a resistor. So if you don't have a lot of current, the motor can be on and sit there all day and be perfectly happy. If you look at the Gecko information on your particular drive, it probably has a jumper that will allow for "auto current reduction" when the motor is stopped / not turning / no pulses being sent to the motor. So when running it gets a high current and when stopped the current is reduced.
So if you just move the indexer out of the way, leave it on, the motor may be perfecty happy with the reduced
current to it.
Look your Gecko drive info about disabling the drive. For example, if you provide a switch on terminal 7 ( Gecko 201's ) you can disable the drive ( which will take the motor / winding current way down / almost zero ).
So you can just use the switch to disable a drive.
No matter what though, don't remove the cable from the motor when the controller is on. Don't short the wires going to the motors. Simply put ...........Just leave the darn cable from the drive to the motor connected when there is power to the controller. Don't screw around wih the cable going to the motors unless you know what you are doing. Let me reinforce again ............you may blow the drive and then you have to spend money to replace it.
There is plenty of info on the Gecko site that you should read and will give a better / more specific info than my reply.
RICH
BTW......DON'T DISCONNECT THE CABLE TO THE MOTORS WHEN THE CONTROLLER HAS POWER TO IT