New XHC USB 4-Axis controller
Mach3 (licensed to me)
Windows10, 64bit
I had a perfectly working 3-axis XHC USB controller but I am setting up for a laser and wanted to use a 4th axis to control the laser output. Hence, I purchased a 4-axis controller from the same company with the latest version of firmware or upgrades.
I followed the directions for installing the new dll's, macros, etc. to the correct directories and began tuning the stepper motors by simply copying the data from screenshots from the other install, i.e., all the settings for steps/per, accel, velocity, etc., saved for posterity (read sanity).
On this latest revision (V) of the XHC 4-axis controller, the board has moved some of the pins over to the other side of the controller as well as adding both Dir+ and Pul+ for the steppers. The 3-axis only had Dir-, Pul- and 5V. It also dropped the PE (primary earth?) pin altogether (more on that later).
Reading as many posts here as I could (mostly for parallel ports, not USB) and from what I could gather from the internet, I only needed to put a connecting wire between both "+", tieing the stepper's "+" signals together for each axis. Seems logical, but as I know nothing about servos, I can only guess there's a need to have them separated. Unsure.
Anyway, the first problem is I can only move in one direction but not the other on all three axes. When using the keyboard's keys to move the gantry, say for the Y-axis, the movement from the up arrow takes place, but nothing for the down arrow. Stay with me now... if I use the MDI and call for "G01 Y-0.5" in moves, but if I call for "G01 Y0.5" it moves too, BUT in the same direction! Same holds true for Z-axis. But when I call for "G01 X-0.5" it moves, but no response when I call for "G01 X-0.5".
Simplier: X, Y & Z move in one direction only with keyboard, but MDI has a different response depending on the axis.
The second problem is the probe light doesn't light up when grounding. Let's go back to the PE pin being no longer present in Rev. V of the board. When I first turned everything on, since I couldn't find a place to put the PE wire from the original setup, I left it disconnected to err on the safe side. When I launched Mach3, I got an error message that said "Is the XPod Inserted OK? It has ceased to Respond,..". So I went to the troubleshooting/FAQ's and sure enough the solution was to "connect the ground wire (PE) of the inverter and the ground wire of the shaft to the earth".
Shut everything down and got out my multi-tester. After unplugging the power cord from the back of the controller, I probed the ground pin at the plug jack and the side of the power supply. Great! That's where I'll connect the PE. Did that and rebooted, launched Mach3 and the message was no longer there.
One of the probe wires fed into the PE pin, then back out to one side of the E-Stop. That's why I though I was killing two birds with one stone.
Spindle is working without issues. Comes on and off and changes speed based on whatever Speed I throw at it, so all good there.
I've played with pin settings, port settings, etc. but still no joy.
It took me 6 weeks to get the item here so I'm not enamored with having to send it back and wait again. I missed making the holiday gifts I wanted to make because of the delay with Customs and China.
Any ideas from anybody would be most appreciated.
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