Hello everyone.
New member and new to CNC. Been using a Sherline 2000 Mill and Lathe for last 4 years. Just bought the A2Z Monster Mill setup, Jeffery's Smoothstepper, Mach3 and converting my Sherline Lathe to CNC too. Leaving the Mill alone.

I have two things working against me. I'm a Mac guru. I know nothing about the PC. And I know very little about CNC. I'm already about to throw my brother's old IBM Thinkpad out the window. My bother is the PC guru. He is the person installing the drivers, plugins and optimizing the setup, checking all the power settings, etc. I can only ask, did you do this, how about that....

I've assembled everything. Disassembeled everything – because I can't get my steppers to work for more than 5 minutes to make sure everything is operating smoothly, no binding, etc. before I bolt and lock everything back together.

Here is my first problem:
For now, I just have the Thinkpad laptop sitting on top of the SS, one motor connected to the SS X-axis port (I've connected the other two and have gotten all 3 to briefly work), USB connected from SS to PC (I'm not using a parallel ribbon/port – so therefore, none of the port and pin config settings and parallel port optimization instructions needs changing, correct???), only the SS is connected to AC (line filter not connected as the Sherline spindle motor is not connected).

Now, when I launch M3, select Jeffery's custom profile, I sometimes get a dialog box to choose a motion device (SS here), sometimes get a message that no steppers were found, and another dialog box with info about Spindle-axis Step Port/Dir Pin – – if steppers found, I let M3 launch. If no steppers were found,  I quit M3, unplug the USB cable and relaunch M3.

So, without touching anything, M3 is on, reset button flashing. Now, about 75% of the time, I move the mouse to reset and the reset button will go all red (no flashing) before I get there, and as soon as I click the mouse on the reset button, the screen goes transparent/whites out and the mouse pointer turns into a spinning torus. M3 is locked up.

Now, though a combination of turning the SS on and off, unplugging/reconnecting cables, rebooting, moving all cables and power around and away from each other because there is stuff I'm reading about noise, a quick dance to the gods, a little pacing, opening the garage door to steal a smoke, and, every once in a while, I can get the reset button to reset, hit tab to bring out the jog fly-out window and get the motors to sing and the DROs to spin.

So, before something melts, I quickly bolt the mill motor to the lathe x-axis table, which is oiled and gibbed, ready to go, ready to see the stepper work. Nothing. M3 is locked up.

I can get everything working again and stop jogging, walk away and come back in 10 min. and M3 will be locked up

Any suggestions on what's going on? Something is not talking to something or is losing comms – –

__________

A couple of follow up questions:

1.  Is anyone on the forum in the Dallas/Fort Worth area for support?
2. Is anyone using the ZBot jog wheel device and can enlighten me how to set up and get this to work too?
3. Jeffery, does the long power cord on the Line filter box go into the back of the SS and the short power cord end/switch box plug into the Sheline motor and the LF junction switch box needs to be mounted as close to the Z-axis/spindle motor as possible?

Thanks,
Bruce

1. Make sure the parallel port driver is NOT installed.
2. Sounds like most, if not all of your problems, are related to the SS. I'd contact the seller for help.

What driver board are you using between the motor and the smooth stepper??? Also are you using a breakout board BOB between the SS and the driver board?? Sounds like something is missing connection wise.
Good luck
Doc

Hey guys
Thanks for the advise. Jeff at Soigeneris is helping me quite a bit. The holidays have spread everything out. I'm hoping to get the steppers moving moving the tables this weekend and then start to concentrate on how to use CamBam/Mach3.
B

Bruce and I spent quite a bit of time on the phone and remote desktop troubleshooting. I was not able to pin the problem down remotely so we sent him another control box. He bought a super cool 15" touchscreen PC that I can't wait to see in operation running Mach. I've been contemplating getting one as well:

http://www.thebookpc.com/product_info.php/cPath/68_36/products_id/470

Bruce,

Can you give us an update?

YK

I sent home another controller and it worked fine. I'm still not sure what the issue with the first one was. I bought one of the same PCs he was using (the Shuttle) and hope to have it set up this weekend (maybe Sunday as I'm leaving to help out with the FIRST Tech Challenge today.) I'll post what I find in case it is useful to other folks.

Hiya Jeff,

Two questions:

1.  What Mach 3 SS plugin was he using?  The beta version, i.e., version 17bd, or the lockdown version, v015ogx2.m3p?

2.  I assume you checked for the USB pwr management thing in the device manager when trouleshooting remotely?

I have seen a few instances of Win7 app / process lockup where the screen sort of greys-out and Mach is unresponsive, requiring a task manager end process to regain control of the PC (and subsequent reboot to clear the decks for another try, of course...)

- Don Gates