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Offline Gandalf

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Re: suitability of notebook
« Reply #30 on: April 04, 2007, 04:17:47 PM »
Evening or morning Brett,
Thinking on it really must be early afternoon for you. A bit late this evening for me to start unless I set up the pins before connecting to the rest of the bits. I had thought that I might be able to re-allocate the pins to suit what I have been using but thought it better to ask first, I do have a 4th board that I have been using with a pulse generator to test motors and the base plate inside the control box is already drilled to take it and all the other connectors are ready and waiting apart fromm connecting to the input socket on the front panel so could I (if I ever get that far) use pins 2&3 for a fourth axis?
Sorry to be so much bother.
John

Offline Chaoticone

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Re: suitability of notebook
« Reply #31 on: April 04, 2007, 04:20:11 PM »
Yeap, I see no problem with that.

Brett
;D If you could see the things I have in my head, you would be laughing too. ;D

My guard dog is not what you need to worry about!

Offline Gandalf

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Re: suitability of notebook
« Reply #32 on: April 04, 2007, 04:57:20 PM »
Thanks for the reply Brett so now I'll leave you in peace.
But tomorrow is another day.
John

Offline Chaoticone

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Re: suitability of notebook
« Reply #33 on: April 04, 2007, 05:29:55 PM »
LOL, I'll look for you then.

Brett
;D If you could see the things I have in my head, you would be laughing too. ;D

My guard dog is not what you need to worry about!

Offline Gandalf

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Re: suitability of notebook
« Reply #34 on: April 05, 2007, 04:58:50 PM »
It has not been a good day,
Nice and warm with the sun shining so it seemed a good ide to start trying to get to grips with Mach 3. It did seem a good idea to sit there in tthe sun with a few beers to hand until I tried to use the mouse. Sideways movement but no up and down so I thought to myself has the Mach coding upset the laptop. In the end the trouble was traced to the bright sunlight shining throughh th plastic of the mouse and upsetting the optical sensors so I put it in a shady spot.
Following the instructions in the Mach 3 tutorial I set up for mm and moved on to the pins and changed them to suit my existing connections, set the motors to my screw pitch and steps and following through the instructions tried the G0 X10 Y10 Z10, nothing happened! Fiddled with the motor settings still no joy so uninstalled the latest version and tried Mach 2.
Even worse this time, terrible trace from the motor test and nothing moved at all. Uninstall and put on the lockdown version, a better trace but not as good as the latest so I set up the motors and pins again and tried the reset which did not want to play. Eventually I found out how to disable the external E-stop and entered similar things as before. OK the numbers moved but nothing ese and I got a green line running off the toolpath screen at an angle and stopped who knows where. Could not alter feeds either in fact could not really do anything other than enter some coding as the instructions said.
I know that the computer has enough output voltage to switch the isolators since it sort of works on a different piece of software so would think that the signals from the Mach program would be similar so now I am sort of stuck and at a loss as to what to try next. I have used default settings apart from the pin numbers initially and later tried playing with motor things but all to no avail. To cap it all the leisure battery I use for a power supply has expired and needs to be interred at the nearest recycling centre. I use a 13.5 volt 110 amp hour battery as a power source and recharge as needed, plenty of power for my small machine that only draws about 6 amps maximum and of course is the smoothest source of power that can easily be found.
Basically I am need of help.
John

Offline Chaoticone

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Re: suitability of notebook
« Reply #35 on: April 05, 2007, 06:25:15 PM »
Hey John,
    Are you using a breakout board or are you wiring straight from the 25 conductor cable to the drives?

Brett
;D If you could see the things I have in my head, you would be laughing too. ;D

My guard dog is not what you need to worry about!

Offline Gandalf

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Re: suitability of notebook
« Reply #36 on: April 05, 2007, 06:45:19 PM »
No breakout board as yet,
I have another posting about some schematics for those, I saw and copied somewhere but cannot find them again as I need a better copy than those I saved. As for the wiring it actually comes from a centronics type connector since I have plenty of old printer leads to play with so using what is to hand but the pins are correct relative to the DB25 connector. I think I may have found the answer though while searching for something similar. It was a series of postings a couple of weeks ago coincerning a similar problem with a Taig Mill. It started me thinking that maybe I had done something silly which on investigation it seems I have. I was using pins 4,6,8 for step and 5,7,9 for direction but on looking more carefully at my own pin out listing I have sort of got step and direction the wrong way round with directions being 4,6,8 and step should be 5,7,9. I think I got confused as I have direction before step on my chart. I have just reset the pin numbers ready for another try in the morning.
Although I may have sorted that out I was still having trouble setting up motor speeds and steps so a pointer or two in the direction in the manual would be very helpful. At the moment though all I want to do is get the thing moving in the right directions and fancy stuff such as making actually machine something can wait until I am familiar with the software and writing something in G code.
John

Offline Chaoticone

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Re: suitability of notebook
« Reply #37 on: April 05, 2007, 07:15:24 PM »
Hey John,
     If you had the pins swaped around, that would do it. Set the accel and vel low to start with in motor tuning. You will have to play with those to get them optimal.

Brett
« Last Edit: April 05, 2007, 07:34:52 PM by Chaoticone »
;D If you could see the things I have in my head, you would be laughing too. ;D

My guard dog is not what you need to worry about!

Hood

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Re: suitability of notebook
« Reply #38 on: April 05, 2007, 07:28:39 PM »
Steps per unit in motor tuning will be (( 1mm/pitch)* Gearing*stepping of motors*stepping of drives) So if your leadscrews were 5mm pitch, you had 2:1 gearing, the steppers were normal 1.8 Degree (200 steps per rev) and the drives were half stepping  you would have  ((1/5)*2*200*2) = 160 steps per unit (mm)

Hood

Offline Gandalf

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Re: suitability of notebook
« Reply #39 on: April 05, 2007, 07:37:45 PM »
No such luxuries as ball screws,
Pension dictates el cheapo studding of M10 and M12 but with belt drives set to result in 1 mm per 200 steps. Likewise pension says only full steps, crude by most standards but fine for me and 0.005 mm per step is as accurate as I need go. Maybe if the God of Lottery numbers should smile upon me then things could change but I am content with what I have but would like to make it work.
John