Hi Peter
I went and borrowed another BOB today and still no luck. There us definitely a signal coming from mach, I can see those little leds light up and fade away as push the jog buttons some come up bright and others just faint and fade. But I don't believe its the board. I put a meter from 48v+ into the gecko and the other side to the outputs to motor some A+ and B- had 48v but A- and B+ had 34v, don't think that's the correct way to test wiring anyhow. Ill have to remove one of the Geckos and check the fuse,  is there a way to test the stepper motor?
Cheers
Katoh

I have just removed the gecko from the lathe, opened it up and checked the fuse, works fine.
I am doing a little test as list on the cnczone forum, checking connection between Pin 1 to 3,4,5,6 all of them show 100kohm resistance next checked from pin 2 to 3,4,5,6. all of them read 26kohm. Don't know if that's good or bad.
One thing I did notice is when I went to check it first using the screw heads on the terminal block I got a reading of nothing. Could it be the terminal block is just not making contact with the pins, Bit far fetched when its on all 3 geckos.

I have no idea where to look next!

Hi Katoh,

Until you can get the Stepper motors to lock, there is no use in worrying about whether the step/dir signals are reaching the drive.

Checks that you have wired the steppers correctly to the G203V. You need to identity the pairs of wires that belong to each stepper coil.

With the stepper disconnected from the G203V use a multimeter to find the 2 wires belonging to each coil.The multimeter will show a few ohms between the 2 wires of a coil. Then check that the 2 wires of a coils are wired to A and /A   and the other coil to B and /B

Also, what value of current set resistor are you using?

Cheers,

Peter

Peter
I ran the multimeter across the wires I have coming back to the gecko's from the steppers and they are both dead, between A+ and A-  or B+ and B-, meaning open circuit no matter which wires I touch. I have the drawings here for the motors, showing the wire colors and coils. I tried just running some power into the stepper direct to see if I could get it to do anything, but nothing. I might just find a motor I can wire up to the gecko that I know works and see what happens if it moves then my two motors have had it.
I'm using a 120 k resistor on the Gecko, to get 5amps, the specs on the motors call for 5amps/phase in parallel connection.
Thanks Again
Katoh

Hi Katoh,

The fact that you are open circuit between A+ and A- and B+ and B- indicated that you may have the wires labelled incorrectly.

Did you try to measure between A+ and B+ or A+ and B- or A- and B+ or A- and B-

When you say you applied power to the steppers, how much voltage did you apply? Steppers are rated around 2V-5V. If you applied 48V then you would have smoked them after a short while.

If you applied 48V and nothing happened then my guess is that the wires you are calling say, A+ and A- are in fact wrong , and that would be lucky as you would have damaged the motor.

Don't just guess and try things otherwise you will eventually destroy something.


First step is to identy the wires that belong to each of the stepper coils.

Cheers,

Peter

Also, how many wires do your steppers have?

Peter

Peter
I'm about to go through all my stepper wiring now, I followed the the plan for the motors but Ill check the windings with an analog meter before trying again. The motors are 8 wire not  had thing to wire up, but I'm going to double check everything anyway.
I tried to power up the stepper with a 9v battery, that usually does the trick.
Thanks
Katoh

Gentlemen
I want to start with the phrase, "its Alive"

like to thank Hood and Peter and Nutron for all their help in solving this problem.

The Bob is fine , the Gecko's are fine and the motors are fine, The constructor/operator needs to see an optometrist, or has a problem with dyslexia! Yet to be proven but as far as facts go operator error is to blame for this error.
Need anymore be said, as total embarrassment came forthwith by being correct by one's 12year old daughter.
lets just say I had a problem telling apart the purple and brown GO FIGURE!
Cheers
Katoh
And a happy new year to all!

 

I'm off to get some shut-eye then.

Cheers,

Peter

Ha ha well just put it down to experience
Hood