*Hangs head in shame and looks to see how many people have seen my mistake doh to many*

It was the 1's that was missing in the last pic that was the problem, for the port solection I must have turned that off by mistake last time I looked but have had it on all the other times I tried stuff, a massive thank you for the help I am a doap.

two little questions sorry 1 is mach and another isnt but thought I would see why I am here if you didnt mind.

1. the X home, Y Home and Z home when I set the pins for them and hit apply and OK the LED's next to the axes home buttons go red?

2. is it ok to add power to my driver board before turning on my pc?

and again thank you hood and Kristin for all the help my head was killing me and has now gone ok

Karl,

No shame at all, there are so many settings in Mach it boggles the mind! I would fire up the PC first, sometimes random stuff comes out the LPT port and could crash an axis. Next on to setting your # of steps and motor tuning. Happy Happy Joy Joy as Ren & Stimpy say!

Kristin

Dont worry about it, I know one person who has done this before and he is typing at this exact moment in time

1. That is correct, they will only turn green when you home the machine. You need to home the machine each time you start Mach so that Mach knows where the axis are.

2. Yes thats not a problem, a lot of people prefer to wait until Mach is in control before you do that but that is just because when booting Windows can look at the port and do all sorts of fancy things which can make your motors jump around slightly. Often breakout boards have charge pumps and if you enable it your breakout should not pass any signals to your drives until Mach is in control. Dont know whether your breakout has a charge pump.

Hood

I serpose its all part of the learning stages lol I dont feel as bad now

arrr so I have set the home pins correct then and i just need to click home so that everything knows where everything is.

I might add a switch in for turning on the power to the board at some point soon then to make me feel better as the steppers do jump a bit on the start up of the pc, I am unsure about the charge pump thing :S

so yes now for the "Next on to setting your # of steps and motor tuning" well I think I might do some more work on the actule machine so I can fit the motors first to give my self a brake as I dont know where to start yet on all that tuning idea lol

Thanks again for this help both of you I cant thank you anoth.

P.S. bad spelling from me sorry

Karl, where are you from? just that I noticed you had your default units set to mm so I am presuming you are at the best side of the Atlantic

Hood

Karl, where are you from? just that I noticed you had your default units set to mm so I am presuming you are at the best side of the Atlantic

Hood

I am in uk, manchester - I only like mm lol am I best working in mm or in inch?

does

<Units>0</Units>

that tell you what units I am working in?

I was looking at the .xml file and was seeing some things that I take it you see how different things were set like I had

  <Port2On>0</Port2On>
  <Port1On>0</Port1On>
 
the port1On should show 1 and not 0

might be wrong but I was intrested to know if I was lol

Well you are using the correct units, its only these old fashioned Americans that use ancient imperial oh and Jim Pinder of course

Yes thats correct, if you look at it after you have shut Mach down you will see  the differences you have made.

Hood

Well you are using the correct units, its only these old fashioned Americans that use ancient imperial oh and Jim Pinder of course

Hood

It's not that Hood, it's just I get a funny look from people when I ask for the 25.4mm wrench. Also a lot of swarf to cut down stock sizes to metric, not to mention I don't think I could find a metric tap or die within a hundred miles!

Kristin

It's not that Hood, it's just I get a funny look from people when I ask for the 25.4mm wrench. Also a lot of swarf to cut down stock sizes to metric, not to mention I don't think I could find a metric tap or die within a hundred miles!

Kristin

excuses excuses

Hood

I use inches some times depends what is closest or in cm lol

got to work this mach out so I know it off the back of my hand I have been looking at G-code and it doesnt look to hard to learn but wow alot needs to be written so that should be fun if ever needed