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Author Topic: Urgent help needed. Setting up MACH 3  (Read 13066 times)

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Re: Urgent help needed. Setting up MACH 3
« Reply #10 on: January 14, 2013, 11:10:22 AM »
no, I'm not even sure that mach3 is communicating with my driver system. The motors are rack and pinion. They are not even making any noise to indicate they are active or awaiting instruction.

Please talk me through turning on my parallel port in bios? Not sure what that is, I was expecting this to be a plug in and play driver.
Re: Urgent help needed. Setting up MACH 3
« Reply #11 on: January 14, 2013, 11:13:08 AM »
the parallel port is usually on, try turning the stepper by hand when the system is off then turn it on and see if the steppers are harder to turn. This will identify that the motors are getting power.
Re: Urgent help needed. Setting up MACH 3
« Reply #12 on: January 14, 2013, 11:15:43 AM »
it may be worth checking that the parallel lead has straight through connections, some are reversed.
Re: Urgent help needed. Setting up MACH 3
« Reply #13 on: January 14, 2013, 11:26:50 AM »
It is easy to turn the motors when the system is on and off. they do not feel or sound as if they are getting power. The LED on the main driver board indicates that it is receiving power from the onboard regulated power supply.

It is just a standard parallel cable I am using. I do not believe it is reversed though the data sheet does not tell me the orientation of the pins on the driver board. It is the male connection to the female coming from my PC
Re: Urgent help needed. Setting up MACH 3
« Reply #14 on: January 14, 2013, 11:39:01 AM »
have you set up the charge pump
Re: Urgent help needed. Setting up MACH 3
« Reply #15 on: January 14, 2013, 11:41:12 AM »
next to the pwr led is the enable led is this on
Re: Urgent help needed. Setting up MACH 3
« Reply #16 on: January 14, 2013, 12:14:30 PM »
when I turn on the system the first and third LED are on. The first is a blue PWR , the other is the Green PS LED.

What is a charge pump and What does it do?
Re: Urgent help needed. Setting up MACH 3
« Reply #17 on: January 14, 2013, 12:14:49 PM »
Make sure the PC parallel port config is for EPP mode. If its not set for EPP it won't communncated correctly to the motor driver board.
Re: Urgent help needed. Setting up MACH 3
« Reply #18 on: January 14, 2013, 12:23:26 PM »
have a read of the diycnc manual, you need to set the charge pump output to pin 1 in mach, or set link L1 to permanently enable the board.

Nothing will work without this enable led on.

Re: Urgent help needed. Setting up MACH 3
« Reply #19 on: January 14, 2013, 12:27:37 PM »
Ok... I just looked at the Dell PC Optiplex you are using. I read someplace, and I try to find it, that Dell's Optiplex line of PC's parallel port BIOS doesn't give the option to be set for EPP mode so it won't work with Mach 3. If this is the case I would go with Smoothstepper and use the USB port.