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Author Topic: New person in need of help......  (Read 3637 times)

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New person in need of help......
« on: February 17, 2010, 03:02:28 AM »
Hey guys/gals first time poster long time troller.  I am having issues with both my on board pp and the PCI PP (rosewill rc-303) card that i got from newegg today.  I am hoping the issues is me and not the hardware.  When i check the voltage on the db25 i am checking pin 2,25 and 3,25 and i either get 3.3v with the on board or 5v with the PCI or nothing at all.  If i read things correctly i should be seeing the pin put out roughly half of the voltage when the output signal is low.  With the on board i have gone into the bios and tried all of the different settings that was available (directional,bidirectional,epp,epc) without seeing any change in voltage levels.  I did the driver test and everything says that it is doing great. 
I am going into the conf ports and pins and setting the correct address for either my on board or pci.  I just have one drive connected at this time so i have just enabled the x axis and have 2 pin for step and the 3 pin for direction.  I have also have the port set to 1.  I have nothing selected in the input or output tabs and i have selected assume home if no inputs.  I can see the DRO jog in both axis but i only get a voltage reading in one direction. The million dollar question is what am i doing wrong.  What i settings are people running with the PP ie legacy on or changing the config in any other way?  Below is my hardware setup.

P4 3ghz
Intel D845PEBT2 MB
2 gigs ram
Nvidia mx 440 agp
Rosewill RC-303 PCI DB25
clean install of XP Pro SP3

drives are API P261_do microsteppers
test motors are 4 wire 2 amp nema 17.
DB25 bob

Offline Hood

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Re: New person in need of help......
« Reply #1 on: February 17, 2010, 03:40:05 AM »
If you are checking on pin 3 (your dir pin) then you will see a voltage when jogging one way and zero volts when going the other, is that what you are seeing?
Hood
Re: New person in need of help......
« Reply #2 on: February 17, 2010, 01:12:41 PM »
Yes hood that is exactly what i am getting.  My current settings in Mach are as follows.
config pins and ports

port 1 set to pci card (df00)
kernal speed set at 25000hz
nothing else selected

motor outputs

x axis on step pin 2 dir pin 3 dir low and step low is off and step port and dir port set to 1
i assume the port # is the port that you assign on the port setup page and not the port assigned in device manager.
nothing is assigned in the inputs or outputs page
steppers so no encoder info
nothing changed in the spindle tab
mill tab has nothing set

voltage reading based off of these settings are as follows (using a fluke 117)
step pin (2) .02 volts in either direction and returns to 0volts after i stop holding the arrow keys down
Dir pin (3) 5.235 when the x- arrow is hit.  The voltage remains after the key is no longer held
x+ the voltage drops to 0volts and remains.

Offline zarzul

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Re: New person in need of help......
« Reply #3 on: February 17, 2010, 01:46:07 PM »
looks like you are getting exactly what you should be.
Not sure why you thought you should have 1/2 volts with the pin off.

the direction pin will put out 5v or 0, depending on the direction you are traveling
the step pin will put out a pulse, 5v with a duration depending on the motor tuning parameter step pulse duration.
You should hookup your driver and try to run it.  Don't forget to get an enable output to it.
Re: New person in need of help......
« Reply #4 on: February 17, 2010, 07:57:16 PM »
Zarzul you nailed the issue.  I had a break in my output wire so the drive was cutting trying to run but couldnt.  The reason i got the idea about half volatage was from another website so i know what i am looking for now.  New user but learning fast ;)