Hi Gents,
Thanks for your replies over the weeks. Have the entire system wired and powered at this stage and connected the device, via parallel port to my PC. However some issues have arose, basically that nothing is happening.
To begin with each of the drivers I have contain a Pulse, Direction, Common and Enable port. Each driver is optically isolated and assume that the 5V output from the PC will activate the driver as the pulses are applied. I have assigned each of the port mentioned above to a corresponding pin on the 25 pin port: Pin 1,2,3 and4. When I go to Mach3 and put a "tick" in the enable box for the X-axis and assign pins 1 and 2 as the step and direction input, I still have no movement in the axis. I went further and assigned enable 1 (under outputs tab) to pin 4, the enable port on the driver. Still nothing.
Have an electrician helping me with the wiring and really want to discover if the problem is with the programme or with the wiring, as his time is valuable. Also if anybody could tell me what I am not assigning correctly as regards ports and pins please help.
Another issue I am having is with proximity sensors on the machine. I have two on each axis of motion, X-, X+, Y- and Y+. The sensors are inductive proximity sensors NPN switching type, therefore operate at 24V which goes through a voltage divider to reduce it to 5V which is then input into Mach3. The sensors are always high and when the target approaches they switch to 0V so I am using negative logic to control them. However when testing them out, they send 5V to the PC, however when I place material in front of them, they do detect the material however the signal is not recognised within Mach3.
Anybody who can help me with this it is greatly appreciated. I am really struggling to grasp both of these problems.
Cheers,
PJ