But is this really a wiring diagram or just a schematic I wonder ?

Somebody woke up this morning in mischievous mood methinks   

Ian

  Sorry Ian, couldn't resist - I think that laser cutting this acrylic is messing with my head. 

Tweakie.

Is that a foot on one of your nuts? - what an excellent idea 

That's neat Tweakie. Can you turn the laser power down enough to etch something into the surface? For instance, if the cut-out was a dog bone, could you etch something like, say... "Scruffies vet and kennel" or whatever, and then maybe light the edges with a colored light so the etching shows up? Or would it be better done engraved with a cutter? I know that etching done on metal looks really great, but I was wondering about if it would work on the acrylic.

My apologies to p j for hijacking his thread.

Yes Ian - I hate it when someone steps on my nuts  

Yes Sam, I can reduce power / increase speed and cut in to any depth. Because the kerf is extremely narrow any engraving is better viewed at an angle. This keyring was the prototype for some made for my musical buddy Terry Batt. (thanks to your help I can now obtain better edge finish than this   )
The best effects with acrylic are by raster etching the surface - this does stand out quite well when side lit. When I get some spare time today I want to raster etch an owl picture using the Mach Impact/laser plugin and I will post some pics of the result.

Tweakie.

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

PJ,

Best to resolve one problem at a time here.

The pin assignments do not normally include pin 1 they are usually (but don't have to be) as follows;

X step - 2
X dir    - 3
Y step - 4
Y dir    - 5
Z step  - 6
Z dir     - 7

At this stage hard wire the enables (they will either be 5V or ground as per the driver instructions) and reconfigure Mach to the pin assignments (if you change anything).
Check that the parallel cable that you are using does actually have pin 1 connected to pin 1, 2 to 2, etc and, if you can, use a voltmeter to measure the PC parallel port outputs to check that, for example, the X dir pin changes state from approx 0V to approx 5V when you hit the X jog arrow keys.

If you report back we will proceed from here.

Tweakie.

Thanks Tweakie,

Have got my motors running, two of the three in one direction only though. I have configured them the same as the third which is working fine in both directions. When jogging both motors turn anti clockwise for as long as I hold them for. Try to go back the other way and no movement whatsoever. I have checked the signal from the PC with a voltmeter and it changes from a high to lo when the direction is changed from positive to negative and vice versa. The system thinks that it is jogging back and the X and Y clocks count down but the screw stays in the same position so when I resume jogging in the positive direction it resumes from the original point that it stopped at. Any takers?

PJ

Having one stepper lead broken/open will do this..

PJ,

The direction signals that you measured with the voltmeter, are they rising to a high level of 5 Volts ?. (some pp outputs only swing to 3.3Volts which may not be enough for some opto isolators in the drivers).
Changing the configuration active high / active low for the step pulse may help.

Tweakie.