If things were done right the first time you wouldnt have nearly as much wiring and soldering experience

Hood

 

Rick

    Well, for the first time I have 3 axises that jog normally, so I loaded a couple of the sample programs that come with Mach3 and watched the servo motors dance in harmony for the first time, (roadrunner,etc).Ho-ray!, I been waiting a long time to see that. now for the rework of the Watchdog alarm board. BTW, When I made up the last servo drive I/O cable I checked the operation of both pin 26 (alarm out) & pin 27 (servo on), they both behave the same, ground present and circuit complete with no drive alarms and circuit open when alarmed. After giving this some thought I believe that's how it should be for a "fail safe" system. If the drive output or a relay goes bad you would want to know immediately, not discover it AFTER the system was needed and didn't work.
    When I get the Watchdog done I'll post a pic or 2, Then there is one more thing I would like to have on my machine. I gonna try to get it on my own, then when that fails I'll let ya in on it so you can bail me out again.

                                   Rick

Look forward to hearing your success on the new plan, I am sure that is what you will be doing rather than asking how to

Hood

   

Look forward to hearing your success on the new plan, I am sure that is what you will be doing rather than asking how to

      Damn Hood, wish I had as much confidence in me as you seem to. I bet your just hoping I get it so you don't have to do it for me!

    I didn't look at the date when I started this thread before this post but it's probally been a couple months. Thanks to a LOT of help and generosity from the members of this GREAT forum I finally have a system that works like I hoped it would when I started dreaming about this diy cnc project almost 3 years ago now.
    I may have never got it without Hood, Chaoticone and Overloaded. Hope you guys don't mind if I call you my friends. Especially Hood because nobody but a GOOD friend would have stuck with me and helped as much as you have,Thank You very much !!
    I got my "watchdog" board installed, working and tested, it does just what I wanted. When I have a drive alarm it puts Mach3 into e-stop and activates the inhibits to all drives, the double safety I was after. The easiest alarm for me to cause is "22 encoder error" just by unplugging an encoder cable. When I do that I get the e-stop and even if I jumper the e-stop circuit so Mach can be reset I still have no motion because of the drive inhibits being activated, perfect. But with the encoder cable unplugged I can flip the toggle switch on the watchdog off, reset Mach3, and jog the axises that are not alarmed, Great! The led's even work like they should, no alarms = green, cause an alarm = red, again, perfect.
    Man, am I ever pleased to see things working correctly after all the troubles I've had. I'm getting ready for work now, will post the pics as soon as I have time.

    Once again gentlemen, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR HELP AND PATIENCE with me.

                                                                                            Rick 

BRAVO ! ! !
Endeavor to persevere.

Be sure to post some pics of some machined parts too !

Congrats ....
Russ

Excellent news
Hood

 

Brett

    Ok folks, I'm gonna try to show my Watchdog board here shortly. Thought I should give you electronics and pcb building experts a heads up first.

                          WARNING - SOME VIEWERS MAY FIND THE FOLLOWING IMAGES DISTURBING or FUNNY AS ALL HELL.

    Please keep in mind I'm NOT an electronics or pcb expert, this is the first thing I've ever put together that used any kind of circuit board, I'm sure you'll see that right off. Make sure you don't have anything in your mouth when you view my next post because if you do it may end up coming out your nose and covering your puter screen.

               You've been warned,  Rick

    Hood recommended I not use the proto board I got because it has one side called a plain and is pretty much all tinned copper. I highly respect his advise but I figured I'd give it a try anyhow since I had it. I inserted the componets from the plain side so I ended up with a board that kinda looks like chrome, shoot, that's gotta be worth at least 10 extra horsepower! Here's a pic taken with flash to highlight the shine.

Another a little less flashy

And now the shot to,  A - make you cringe and laugh,  B - illustrate it don't have to look good to work


               Rick