The Big Red Mechmate in Aus

[EddyCurrent]

What I meant was that I was having difficulty understanding your wiring diagram, I started to redraw it.
The general arrangement with multiple sets of pushbuttons is this;

N/O (normally open) are wired in parallel, N/C (normally closed) are wired in series.
So with that in mind it should be easy to connect the 3 boxes to the rest of the circuit you already have working.

[ozspeedway]

Ah, yea knew that re NC & NO. In this case that will result in mega wiring throughout the machine. I have started wiring up things as per my diagram, will report how it goes when I done doing school holiday stuff with the kids.

[EddyCurrent]

Any update Bruce ?

[ozspeedway]

Nothing to report unfortunately Eddy, *still* stuffing around with this control box (and losing interest real quick!). My PMDX 126 arrived and needed a little reorganisation of the inside layout. I also had to abandon your wiring setup for the start/reset-pause-stop buttons as I needed to have the reset/start button actually be able to start the job from nothing and not just from pause or stop. Went mad trying to get it to work so decided to just wire all of them directly to the bob and figure out a new brain to control them. Still haven't finished that side yet and thats where things stand right now.

Cheers
Bruce

[ozspeedway]

Bit of an update, the machine is close to finished, just some wiring to button up. Having a couple of issues with certain things that I thought I would run past you guys. My main showstopper at the moment is wiring my motors.

I bought 4 640 Oz-In Nema 34 motors, 34H280-45-8A, that I want to wire in Bipolar Parallel. The site I got them off has one wiring definition (http://ausxmods.com.au/index.php?mai...products_id=13), the spec sheet from Automation Technologies has another http://www.automationtechnologiesinc...motor-6-3-amps. Wired them as per the Auto Tech specs and my AM882's instantly go into over current error. I then wired them as per AusXMods and while the AM882 powered up fine there is absolutely no movement from Mach3 via my new PMDX-126/Ethernet Smoothstepper combination.

I currently have a contact form email into AusXMods and MS-Motor (who seem to supply these things) to try and determine who is correct. Once I have that I know what I need to look into - The AM882 Over Current problem or the no response from Mach3 to the motor

Something else that is not working as it should is my touch-off implementation. I use Gerry's (Ger21) 2010 screenset and have a button on my machine that when pressed it sends the signal via a 2 way switch. Depending on which way that swith is set determines which pin is activated on the BOB. Once the pin is detected, a brain I have written that sets a UserLED which is then detected my Mach Mad plugin to run the macro associated with the UserLED. Now (after all that), this worked fine when I was using a PMDX-122 via Parallel port. As I blew up my 122 I replaced it with a PMDX-126 and also stuck an Ethernet Smoothstepper into the mix. However, none of the above works, infact no touch-off routines work (Mach says No Probe Active) Unless I tell it the Probe input under Ports & Pins is on one of the lines I am using. Of course, this causes the other setting not to work. Totally different from the 122 implementation and not what I want. Have given up on this one until I get my motors turning.

There we go. Pics and videos when I all works as it should :)

[ozspeedway]

Well, I am in idiot, that is in respect to the motors. AusXMods settings are infact correct and it was me putting the wrong ports and pins in for the motor I was tested. Changed it to what it was supposed to be and whola! the motor spins.

Still need to sort the touch off issue though..

Cheers
RD

[EddyCurrent]

Well, I am in idiot, that is in respect to the motors. AusXMods settings are infact correct and it was me putting the wrong ports and pins in for the motor I was tested. Changed it to what it was supposed to be and whola! the motor spins.

Still need to sort the touch off issue though..

Cheers
RD

Have you looked at the Smoothstepper diagnostic page to see if it is seeing the probe inputs ?

[ozspeedway]

Hi Eddy

Yup, the ESS diag page show the 2 pins being active when the button is pressed, thats whats weird about it. To double check I bypassed the macros and put G90 G31 Z0 directly into the MDI and all I got back was No Probe Active so it has nothing do to with any of my scripts, macros or brains - it is a Mach/ESS/126 combo issue. I have an email into Steve at PMDX but as yet no reply

Cheers

[ozspeedway]

Machine is almost ready to go, structure is complete and control system 99% done. Still need to get the spindle power and cooling buttoned up. I wanted to check that machine would do what I wanted it to so I chucked my sharpie holder into the spindle and had the machine draw a couple of things. It temporarily became a giant plotter :)

Still haven't sorted the touch off stuff yet, have just eliminated the 126 as the problem. It is looking like the ESS is getting in the way somehow.

Anyway, more to do before making dust instead of drawing stuff..

Cheers

[EddyCurrent]

I thought the pen would have run out before finishing that aztec drawing, looks great though.

My setup is like this;

I have two breakout boards, one connects to the ESS Port#1, the other to Port#2

Breakout boards connect to ESS using these; http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/25cm-25-Wi...item5af9b1c491

The Z probe is connected to breakout board 2 (the one connected to ESS port 2), pin 15
Because the Z probe is switching to earth the bob Gnd pin must also be connected to earth otherwise there would be no circuit, I did this by connecting the bob power supply negative terminal to earth.
On the ESS config page Port#2 'pins 2 through 9 direction' is set to 'In'
The ESS driver I'm using is ESS_v10r2d1d (the latest)

These are my Mach 3 settings;

Port#1 = 0x378 enabled = yes (ticked)
Port#2 = 0x278 enabled = yes (ticked)
Ports & Pins page; 'Probe' input = port 2, pin 15, enabled(ticked), active low(ticked).