Good evening,

I am running a licensed version of mach 3.043. I am building a plasma table with 4 nema 23 motors. I have an X, Y, Z, and A. I have wired everything according to the driver specs (Please see attached document). I am using 4 DM542T motor drivers. my BOB is a DAOKI 12-24V CNC breakout board 5 axis Mach 3 interface board with optical coupler board. (it was cheap on amazon and I am starting to think I need to get a different one) In the setup of the motor and pins, I have selected the corresponding pins to my BOB. X:Step(2) Dir(3) Y:S(4)D(5) Z:S(6)D(7) and A:S(8)D(9). I click apply and then go on to setup my other outputs/limits etc. When I jog the machine I am able to get movement in both directions of all motors except every motor's axis is switched. The X button controls my Z motor, Y button controls A motor, Z button controls X motor and A(4?) button controls the Y motor. Now I went back into the ports and pins menu and changed them to reflect the motors they are controlling.  X: Step(6) Dir(7) Y:S(2)D(3) Z:S(8)D(9) and A:S(4)D(5). I then clicked apply and ok. There was no change in motor output control. I dug into some forums and it was advised to delete all the XLM files and reconfigure the ports and pins. I did so and it had no change. I also restarted the Program and the PC. I also went as far as completely uninstalling and reinstalling mach 3 from a fresh download off of the website. I did this twice. I even restarted the computer when I installed the software and the Parallel port driver per the setup instructions. This time upon starting up and after configuring my pins. The motors are still incorrect but now the X,Y,Z,A jog buttons control a different, incorrect motor.



Also, on a related note, I have setup the Slave axis X:A. I noticed that when I get the physical X motor to run (labeled Z in mach 3) no other motor runs. In fact when I run all of the motors individually, there is not an instance where two motors ever run at the same time. I am at a loss and unable to figure out what is going on.

I am running a Dell optiplex 390 with a PCI-E card. Windows 7 32 bit. Card voltage should not be an issue as the BOB is supplied by its own 5V power supply. I have checked and rechecked and checked all the wiring. I am even running shielded cable for all of the step/dir wires as well as the motor leads. I have also checked the parallel port for continuity - all pins match up.  One thing that I can think up that in some way could be interfering is that when I downloaded mach 3 to a fresh windows 7 computer the application would cause the computer to crash. I started deleting updates in chunks of 4 until I got it so I could run the program without it crashing. Maybe there is something there, maybe not. I have no idea. I am brand new to this and learning as I go. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

We all started out at the beginning of the learning curve and after 20+ years I am still learning !

I notice that your X and Y axis drivers are not connected as per the breakout board instructions (P2 & P3 should be connected to the X axis and P4 & P5 the Y axis). Changing these would make you original Pin allocations correct.
When changing Pin allocations, as well as clicking on Apply it is prudent to restart Mach3. This ensures that your .xml file (which contains all your Mach3 settings) is updated with the correct information. Not all changes require a restart but a lot do.

Perhaps check your LPT Parallel cable to make sure that Pin1 connects to Pin1, Pin2 to Pin2,etc. (there were some funny cables made and you may just have one of those).

Tweakie.

One more thing to check…

Most modern PCI-E boards output 3.3Volt TTL and your breakout board may require 5Volt TTL inputs.
Check the output voltage from your PC’s Parallel Port. Choose an axis direction pin, it should read approx.  5Volts when that axis is jogged in one direction and approx.  0Volts when jogged in the opposite direction. If you only get approx.  3.3Volts then this could affect the logic in your breakout board and be causing the problems you are experiencing.

Tweakie.