OK. We've tried everything. We've got a MaxNC Router hooked up to Mach 3. They're talking; if we manually trip a limit switch, we see the led light up on Mach 3, but there's no motor response. We've tried everything mentioned in the troubleshooting video: port 378 is good, X, Y, and Z are turned on with the pin settings from MaxNC. Incidentally,  our driver test looks very good.

We are a small high school just starting out with CAD so please explain things 'slowly'!

Larry

OK first thing to do is determine how far the Step and Direction signals are getting. If you have a scope use that, if not then a voltmeter will do.
 Disconnect the parallel port cable and on the back of the computer connect between X axis Dir pin and ports ground, jog the X axis one way then the other and you should see 5v one way and 0V the other. Repeat that for all axis Dir pins. Then do the same with the Step pins, you will see a voltage when jogging and 0v when not. If thats all good then put the cable back in and test on the other end. Then next its your board, see if you get signals coming out of that to your drives.

If you want you can attach your xml and maybe someone will spot a setup problem.

Hood

Thanks Hood,
I'll bring in a volt meter tomorrow and we'll run your tests.

In the meantime, here's our XML file..
thanks all,
Larry

Just a caution here  Larry, DO NOT connect or disconnect the wires running from the
drives  to the motors with power on.

Ok, if your like me, I'll repeat:

DO NOT connect or disconnect the wires running from the drives to the motors with power on.

RICH

I am wondering if you should have one of the Max NC modes chosen? Is your machine one of them?

Hood

There's two MaxNC options there and we tried both, as well as neither. No motor action in any case....

Say Hood (or anyone), which pin is ground?

Larry

18 to 25 are grounds

Hood

We had to disable the limit switches since once we unplugged the router the Reset switch tripped. Once this was done we checked voltage between pins 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 (the motor output pins as specified by MaxNC) against pin 25 on the computer's female parallel port. We did this while jogging x, y, and z in Mach 3. We never got any voltage anywhere. I assume this means the internals of the port are faulty, eh?

Larry

 I am not sure if ALL Max machines are the same but I seem to remember some are quadrature outputs rather than step and direction, if that is the case then you will definitely need one of the options checked for Max** on ports and pins page. You may also have enables that you need to set up.
 Do you have a pdf manual that you could attach?

Hood

Hi, Larry

Max NC uses ether Quadrature or Rollover on Most of there Drives.

If Stepper, Max NC "Checked" on Config, Ports & Pins Page,

"Z" axis pin's 2,3,4,5,
"X" axis pin's 6,7,8,9,
"Y" axis pin's 1,14,16,17,

It uses all the output pin's so I don't think it has an Enable pin from Mach3.

In Config, Ports & Pins, Output's Page, No pin's selected.

In Config, Motor Tuning, Set Step & Dir. Pulse's to 5

Then Continue with Motor Tuning and Such.....

SEQUENCE For Z Pin's

Z | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Pin's

A | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0
B | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0
C | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0
D | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1

SEQUENCE One Dir. A,B,C,D,A,B,C..... or Other Dir. D,C,B,A,D,C,B......

Let us Know, Hope this Helps get you Going.

Chip