I am using Mach3 with a Galil 1850 (ISA) controller and it works fine. I also want to add mist coolant, flood coolant, and spindle drive features. I purchased a parallel port Mach3 breakout board and cable, and have configured Mach3 to use pin1 for the spindle CCW, pin2 for the spindle CW, pin3 for M8, and pin4 for M7, and unchecked the disable spindle and flood/mist relays boxes. I also selected PWM control of the spindle, and intend to use the 0-10 volt output to drive my VFD on the spindle motor.
I have the breakout board connected with a pin to pin DB25 cable to LPT1 (selected as the port in setup), and with a USB cable to provide 5 volt power to the breakout board as required. I also have an external 24V power supply connected to the breakout board 24V and Gnd pins.
Relays 1 and 2 are both on, and the 0-10V signal is at 9.986 volts. I have run driver test.exe and all is excellent up to and including 100 kHz. Sending M7, M8, M9, M2, M3, and M4 commands show the expected LED's on the diagnostic screen, but the relays never change. Changing speed (e.g. S2000) changes the speed in the speed window, but the 0-10V signal never changes. The relays only change very briefly when I use Explorer to navigate to a file, but soon return to the previous state. I checked Pin 4 of the cable and it remains at 5 volts regardless of sending M9 or M7 commands.
When I installed Mach3 I Selected Parallel Port Driver in the Select Program Components Screen, but I had to chose the Galil-st-Barker etc. option instead of printer port on the Select Control Device Screen. Does this disable the printer port? Is it feasible to use the break-out board with the Galil controller, or do I need to use the Galil output pins to control relays?
If I need to use Galil pins to control the spindle, is there a good way to create the 0-10 volt signal? I do have servo motors and amplifiers that use a -10 to +10 volt signal and a spare axis which might be of some use. If necessary I could also set up a micro-controller with PWM output and a 3 bit input to get a variable DC level, but that seems rather difficult.
Bob