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another noob with setup problems
« on: November 15, 2010, 10:25:24 AM »
I'm another noob pulling my hair out!  I just finished building a cnc based on the book "build your own CNC machine" by patrick hood-daniel.  I have followed the instructions what I feel as exactly. I even got my electronics from his website.  Basically I got everything together and wired up, all the board lights went on, the motors energized but I cannot get MAch3 to make anything move.  I've read most of the topics rerlating to this kind of issue but i have more questions.

On the motor output screen the book says to enable x,y,z and assign them pins 2,3  4,5   6,7 but says nothing about drlowactive, steplowactive, step port or dir port.  When I did it this way I got no activity throuph the parallel port using parmon.  The picture in the book shows neither lowactive activated but shows "1" in all the port spots. I read one troubleshooting guide based on the parmon program and it says to activate steplowactive.  By trying different combinations of these setting I have finally at least got parmon to show pins 3,5,7 changing to red using the jog keys.

what i have currently is:

x    enable    2    3      x      x      1     1
y    enable     4    5      x     x      1     1
z    enable     6     7     x      x     1      1

what exactly should this screen look like???

also when things are working correctly what should parmon look like?  with mach3 booted up I have green pins except for one red on pin 12, and when i hit all the jog keys i can get 3,5,7 to toggle on and off.

i checked the cable and it appears good.  with it toggleing like described above the motors do nothing.

the first 6v tranformer i used was showing 8V so i switched to one that shows 5.2V. can this be a problem??

i puit a voltmeter across the 5v power input on the board and each connection marked 2,3,4,5,6,7 and they all read 5V.

i do not have an estop mounted yet and have tried every combination of settings on the input screen.

Any ideas. I've now tried so many combinations I'm lost.
Re: another noob with setup problems
« Reply #1 on: November 15, 2010, 10:31:10 AM »
one other thing.  I bought motor drivers from the book website that look identical to  Keling KL-4030 but are labeled slightly different. I assumed the order of connections was the same but maybe I should ask.  The keling has connections labeled ENA-,ENA+, Dir-, Dir+, Pul-, Pul+ but the driver I got is labeled (I'm going from memory here but something like) Rest-, Rest+, CL-, CL+, CW-, CW+.   

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Re: another noob with setup problems
« Reply #2 on: November 15, 2010, 01:30:10 PM »
Active High or Low may make a difference to the drive but you would still get motion I would say. Sounds to me like you may not have your drives set correctly, best check that out first. I am not sure what drives you actually have but I know on a coil winder I built with a Chinese drive the instructions had a few mistakes, one was the dip switch for CW/CCW and StepDir, could be the same with yours.
Hood