11 hours of trying to get the motors to turn, help please

I am having a bit of trouble getting my stepper motors to turn at the moment, they are SY60STH86-3008BF from zapp. All they will do is partially step/stall but they have power on.

My System is:
5vdc PS
50vdc PSU
4x MA860H
4 X SY60STH86
and a no name ebay 5 axis breakout board.

I have comms with the breakout board and the led lights up at the relevant axis breakout point showing comms. The drive enable signal is measured at 5vdc when open circuit but if i connect a drive to the breakout board it drops to 1-2vdc. Pulse and direction show 5vdc
When I ask an axis to turn the motor stalls/steps a little bit/stops but has holding torque.

My motors are wired as follows:
Blue/White & Red = A+
Blue & Red/White = A-
Green/White & Black = B+
Green & Black/White = B-

I am certain mach3 ports and pins are set up correctly.
Any help with this would be great, thanks.

A picture of the cabinet



A picture of the connections

http://i46.tinypic.com/e1dish.jpg

And a picture of the cabinet

http://i49.tinypic.com/1zc0mdv.jpg

What are you using for the parallel cable.?

Also what is the Motor tuning set at.?

Give details of micro stepping and ball screw pitch for each axis.

Ball screw is 1605, motor turning is set at 4000mm/min microstepping is 10 steps per is 200. tried all sorts of ranges, no micro stepping etc.

Not got step and direction switched round have you ?

Ok,
I have measured Vdirection 4.5v one way 0v the other, Changed the paralell cable with a known good one, checked step and direction connected correctley and just for fun swapped them around.
Cheers for the help so far chaps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wotsit

Changed the paralell cable with a known good one

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When you say known good one how do you know it's good.? What's it been connected too.? . . . Must be straight thru not a serial printer cable.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JAZZCNC

When you say known good one how do you know it's good.? What's it been connected too.? . . . Must be straight thru not a serial printer cable.

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I removed it from my last cnc machine, it was working then so I guess it shold now unless this board is a bit picky.
I have ordered a new breakout board to try that as well.

Thank you for all the help

Ok well your wiring looks fine and tuning etc is correct so clutching straws now.!!

Try re-installing Mach and it's driver It's not unknown for Mach to throw a wobbly and it only takes ten mins.

If the breakout board is the same as the ZP5Aint that we sell, then you have it connected to the drivers wrong.
There is no VCC on the breakout board and the step, direction and enable are buffered. (So they give a 5V pulse)
So lets take the X axis as an example.
Xn is GND so goes to all the negative sides of the the control inputs (PUL-, DIR- and ENA-).
The XD goes to Dir+, XS goes to PUL+ and XE goes to ENA+.
Also dont use USB to power the 5V, use an external power supply and put the selector switch to DC 5V

http://www.zappautomation.co.uk/en/a..._attachment=91

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gary

Xn is GND so goes to all the negative sides of the the control inputs (PUL-, DIR- and ENA-).
The XD goes to Dir+, XS goes to PUL+ and XE goes to ENA+.

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Thats just how i have connected it, i can see a constant voltage on the Dir pin though. I have also tried with a linear 5v psu and usb. I have ordered a new board from you via ebay.

Is it the cheap Chinese board ?
If so post what pins you are using in Mach because these boards are all over the place

Got it sorted in the end, the step and direction pulse in the instructions for the breakout board are shown as 2us I needed to set them both to 4us to get the motors to run.

Thanks for your help.

We always set to a minimum of 5us. half the boards out there are just not fast enough regardless or what they say.

sorry, never though to mention this, just do it automatically.

BTW mach says 0 - 5 us or 1 - 5us [ can't remember ] but it will accept a greater value. Sometimes have to go as high as 7 to get some of the spindle speed boards to output the full 10v.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by John S

sorry, never though to mention this, just do it automatically.

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SNAP. . . But usually you get some motion just a bit erratic so I'm surprised at that.!! . . . I'd be suspicions of that BOB and it would have been obliterated against the wall by now anyway. .:livid:

Sorry to temporarily hijack your thread with a silly question but I have mine on 0us for both Step and Dir in the motor tuning and it works fine so far on my limited test runs. Is there any detriment to running 5us for both step and dir if its (apparently) not needed or is this a safety buffer? Trying to avoid headaches later on, got enough of those already, from incorrect settings.

Direction pulse width doesn't seem to do anything, always leave it at 0
No detriment to running higher, a lot depends on the BOB and how good the opto's are

Sounds like I can leave it where it is then. Good to know.