King Midas mill conversion

[diy-john]

Status is now that all three (3) Nema 23 -motors turn. Driving them with EMC2 (linuxcnc)

To get here, what I have done yesterday and today is:

1) Bought some sundries from a local Electrical store:


2) Parallel printer cable - test each of the small 25 different wires with a multimeter.
- try to understand which colour cable links to which PIN on the parallel port
- here is the printer cable cut, from the "printer end" of the cable
- measured with "continuity mode" in multimeter, each of these 25 small wires.
- for all of you these are probably really elementary steps. But for me it was a bit of a surprise, that one would have
to get into this level of detail.
-- Had relied on some charts I had found from internet, on colour schemes of the parallel cable wires. But they did not seem to match my cable, so had to manually check each of the wires,
to which PIN they connect in parallel port.
- Found these "alligator jaws" handy


3) Here are the parallel port PIN's, cable colours, and where I have connected them on the Leadshine M752 drivers.





4) A picture of how they are on the table now
- had bought 30 LED's for troubleshooting.
- found them helpful, though 30 is too many. I ended up using just one single


5) Now, what do you think?
- Could one now solder cables neatly in place?
- Have been thinking of using this kind of 9 PIN -cables for each stepper-driver


-- So that the cables could be quickly attached / detached.
-- Would use these for the low-voltage, parallel cable wires.
--- Parallel cable (25 wires) ---> divide to 3 smaller cables (9 PIN) ---> each stepper driver

Motors seem to work okay, though they don't "home" itself on the EMC2. Not sure why that is. Haven't got a stop-switch, limit switches yet.

Please comment on whether one can now solder things, or should one wait until have limit switches and emergency stop-button?
- actually, any and all comments welcome

Thanks!