Hello,

I finally decided to setup my Z homing switch today and I'm not having much luck.

I've connected a wire to pin 13 and a wire to the 5V slot next to it on my breakout board. I've done an automatic setup of the pin in the software (Z home). I've enabled the Z home in Limits/Homing. I'm planning to have a simple plate and alligator clip to the bit.

When I click Ref All Home, I get nothing. The machine doesn't move. I've tried to ref the Z axis through Diagnostics also, but nothing there either. When I hook the wires together in Diagnostics the M3 Home lights up.

I did check to make sure that everything is working by adding in g code and a manual jog.

I have not hooked up the alligator clip to the spindle yet, does the pin wire need to be grounded for the software to recognize the switch?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated,

KaW

Should work fine, can you attach your xml just in case there is a config issue, however if the Home LED is lighting when you touch the wires it shouldnt be that.
Hood

Hood.
I'm pretty new to doing anything with Mach 3 that doesn't involve me loading a file. Can you give me a heads up on where I can export the XML?

Thanks
KaW

Here's the XML

Dont see a problem in the xml and when I press the RefAll button the Z axis moves.
Can you check that your RefAll buttons script is intact by going to Operator menu then Edit Button Scripts and then clicking on the Ref All button.

This is what the default has, 24 being the Z axis.

DoButton( 24 )
DoButton( 23 )
DoButton( 22 )
DoButton( 25 )

DoOEMButton(133)
DoOEMButton(134)
DoOEMButton(135)

Also have a look at the ticker window to see if there are any error messages there.
Hood

Hood.

Thanks for looking at this. I'm out doing some quotes on work today, so I'll look at this later tonight.

Thanks again,

KaW

Hood,

Everything looked fine there. I did notice that as I was sitting on the diagnostic screen, the M3 light would blink randomly 3 - 20 seconds. I'm wondering if it's not an issue with my parallel port.

Any other ideas?

Thanks again for your help.

Sounds like you are getting noise, best bet is to shield the wries correctly but to mask the problem you could increase the Debounce Interval on the General Configs page. Try 2000 and lower if  it works until you get the problem again then increase slightly.
Hood