Hi,

So quick backstory, I have been a machinist and manager in manufacturing for over 25 years. In my normal day job I recently and unfortunately had to close down a facility for my company. In that process they had a small desktop CNC mill that was sitting in a corner and the boss said to just throw away because it hadn't worked in a while. They set it up to mill a feature into an easy plastic part after it was molded. Instead of landfilling it, I asked if I could take it home and he agreed.

I recently cleaned and hooked it all back up and was surprised to find it functional, or at least mostly.

Basically I am able to get the external motion controller to move the X,Y, And Z axes around with the MPG pendant and I was able to configure Mach4 to be able to see the UC100 controller that is plugged into the LPT parallel port. I am able to get Mach4 to see the UC100 and with some configuration I can even get it to recognize the E-Stop, and enable functions and such. I can see the pin outs working in the UC100 diagnostics panel in Mach4, but I cannot get it to actually move any of the axes. I believe it's a configuration setting that I missed or have wrong, but for the life of me I cannot figure it out.

I have set all the input motor ++/-- to their pins, I have set the E-Stop, Enable, and Machine Enable to their pins, and I have set the motors up. The UC100 shows connected and gives response to the E-stop function, but seems to be about it currently. I also noticed in the pin out panel for the diagnostics that pin 13 as an input seems to be on, but that is for a function I didn't map. So not sure if that is causing a problem or not. I know Mach4 is your competitor, but I am posting here as well as on their forum just in case.

Any advice if possible, would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Uh, this is the Mach support forum...

Have you looked at the cncdrive site? They make the UC100 and support it. Also have a support forum

John,

Yes I posted there as well.

However I posted here as I am suspecting it's a Mach4 configuration issue as the UC100 connects (or so Mach4 tells me) and I get status lights for the inputs I mapped and can get them to toggle appropriately from the machine, but I am not able to get motor output to the machine for some reason. I am about 99% sure it's not on the machine control (i.e. stepper boards, etc.) because I can move the machine while in manual mode from it's MPG.

See screenshots in original post of UC100 diagnostic panel. But that is ultimately why I am posting in the forums, because I am unsure where to go at this point.

I have a set of instructions for this MIB Controller for Mach3, but it's too old at this point and was made before mach4 was released. The only thing I haven't messed with the modbus settings as they are completely different from Mach3 to Mach4 and that is supposedly only to sync the on machine mpg with Mach3/4

Any advice or guidance is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

After more research and testing last night the only thing that is making sense is the the LPT port on the machine controller is faulty. All the diagnostics point to both the UC100 and Mach4 working correctly.

Does anyone know if there is an easy way to check the output signals from the UC100 short of using a multimeter on each pin? Just to be sure before I invest in a new motion controller? (It really needs the update anyway!)

Thanks,
RedWolfXIII

The UC100 is tha motion controller...