Background
First time poster, I purchased/built a CNC Router Parts PRO4'x8' router table for our high school robotics team in December 2014. The electronics are based around their plug and play NEMA23 kit, and they refer to it as their CRP500 series, using an Ethernet Smooth Stepper. I include all this for completeness, but i'm not sure if it is relevant or if many would be familiar with the hardware. I had gotten Mach 3 running reasonably well with the base XML files and a little fiddling.

The Problem
We recently built a computer to leave permanent mounted, versus a temporary laptop. However, we are unable at times to turn on our spindle (relay control). If I sent it to home, the spindle won't toggle on if commanded to. If I jog in any direction, it will turn on after that. Any G-Code programs will not recognize the M03 command either. If the spindle is spinning (because I jogged prior to the program and manually toggled it on), it will actually turn off when the program runs.

Adding further oddness, if I flip the output from active high to low, "normal condition" is to stay running as expected, but sending the spindle to home will still turn it off.

What we checked
We verified (as best we could) all setting from the previously running laptop to the computer, and they look fine. For us, the spindle is on Output 1, which is Port 1 Pin 17. Nothing else shares this pin as far as we could tell. We looked through every menu trying to find something that might act as a lockout, etc. It just seems weird that any safety lockout would be disabled when jogging, but enabled when running code or heading to home.

Can anyone recommend a setting to look at that might be responsible for the problem?

Set the active high/low to where it works. THEN look at the Script that runs the HOMING and see IF it is turning off the spindle.

(;-) TP

I'll check this out in a couple hours when I can get back up to the school.

However, it isn't just turning off as I hit "Go to Home". If I toggle the spindle on, and it is sitting at home position, it will not start. If I jog X,Y, or Z in any direction, it will immediately turn on.

I'm no expert in it, but I would assume whatever the homing script is (nothing custom, just the default in mach3), it would quit executing after reaching home position, and not continue to lock out the spindle? Unless maybe the homing script is NOT finishing its execution, but sitting there in limbo blocking future commands, but the jog overrides it and allows the queue to clear?

I would guess there is a script or a brain OR plugin that is running that turns OFF the spindle when at HOME position or while homing.  It could be a function of the SmoothStepper Plugin.

(;-) TP