I have volunteered for a friend to build the electronic part of his Gatton CNC machine. I have it all put together using the info from "MACH3 USB" page from "BuildyourCNC" webpage. He bought the software/license and a package of motors/drivers from Stepperonline. Motors are Nema 23 with DM542T drivers. The breakout board is the red board with the white eagle on it. Yes, I realize there are several of them to chose from, all of dubious quality. This one came from Amazon including a disk and cable. It has the URL
www.mymcu.com printed on it. I am using two 36 volt power supplies. I have the unit all wired according to a diagram that I found on the website. I followed their approach to get one channel/motor working one at a time. I downloaded the xml file that seems to have made the required settings in the software to make things work at least for testing. The first test was a failure.
The mach3 software is installed on an older laptop which runs windows 10 that is current on updates. The required plugins were installed (USB Motion Driver RnRMotion.dll and xml). I noted that the motors and channels I needed were enabled. There are no limit or Estop switches. I checked to make that they were not enabled. But no matter what I do, I can not get the motor to run. I swapped driver and motor. Ran continuity checks on all wires. I then connected a scope to the PUL+ and DIR+ connections on the driver. I went to the GUI and tried to use the left/right arrow keys to make the motor run. These buttons did not seem to do anything including run the counters on the display. I then opened the remote control with the TAB key. Using the X+ and X- buttons, I could make the counters move on the GUI. I can reset them to zero and I can stop them by clicking on the RESET button. At the scope, I put ch1 on the PUL+ and ch2 on the DIR.+ When I click on the X+ button the ch1 goes HI at 5volts with a negative pulse. Ch2 is also high at 5volts. When I click on the X- button, the ch2 goes full low and the ch1 remains high with the same low pulse as before.
With my lack of knowledge about the red board, (I can't locate a schematic if there is one) I would think that it might actually be working as it is supposed to.
Is there any real logical approach to troubleshooting beyond this point? I am clueless beyond this and would be grateful for any assistance.
Two scope shots show the X+ and X- scope results
Charles