Help please. Dip switches and mach 3 settings

[Radu_Andrei]

Ok. Thank you. And yes, the 5v usb cable is run from the pc. I have a phone charger available as well. It reads 4.74v at pc5v and pcgnd.
Does it matter?

[john swift]

phone chargers are not regulated very well
so you will be better off either using the PC's USB port or using a regulated 5V power supply to power the 5V side of the breakout board

John

[cropwell]

PS

a simple input tester I used to test a similar BOB without using a PC (or motion controller)

Attachment 24652

I made a pass-thru tester years ago when I was trying to work out what was happening with a printer/plotter I had. Exactly the same as that but with lower value resistors but each LED was powered by the printer or PC.

[cropwell]

phone chargers are not regulated very well
so you will be better off either using the PC's USB port or using a regulated 5V power supply to power the 5V side of the breakout board

John

I use exactly that BoB with a 12/5v dual power supply from a defunct external hard drive. It works fine !

[Clive S]

It has the 12 v input, a light is on on the bob at the end of the input pins. It makes a subtle high pitch noise when I connect any of the input pins to the ground pin, but it does not register it in mach 3.
All grounds are together, but now I.m testing it with a single wire.
Pc gnd is not connected to anything.
The only difference with this bob is that it has a P14, to which all I ran all ENBL- from the drivers.

What voltage do you have between an input pin and ground with out any switch connected?

[Radu_Andrei]

Hi.
Sorry for the late reply, the internet was out for a while.
Nice tester. It seems you guys are doing this electronics thing for quite some time. That.s why you.re all so smart. I suspected at first, that you.ve made a pact or something, like Faust, that you knew the answer to every problem I came up with. :P

Regarding the question, if I remeber right, as I measured a lot of connections today, I don.t think it was any voltage between the input pins and ground, but I might be wrong. I.ll check tomorrow, if it helps.
It seems ok so far how the project is going. I just finished a few hours ago to install the touch plate, added some script in mach 3, and it seems to work ok but a bit slow. I.ll change some numbers in there and should be fine.

Next week I.ll set the soft limits, reconnect the x and y motors to the ballscrews, and run some tests. I don.t know, what test I need to check if I get steps missed, but at least I have a plan. :)
Then add a flat wood surface and make it straight, mill it I guess, then add a sacrifice board on top of it, then learn some cam software, and also buy some ebay projects with sculptures and stuff, to have a go at cutting.

I don.t know if all this ideas are good either, but thanks to you guys, I kinda feel confident it will all work just fine.
There.s still quite some work to do, and I.m aware I.ll keep bothering you for some time, but still... A BIG THANK YOU to you all. :)
You mean a lot for people without technical backgrounds. A couple decades ago, people were struggling to find info like this, and most of the time they could not.
I have more gratitude to express, but I.m starting to sound creepy, so I.ll shut up.

[Clive S]

Regarding the question, if I remember right, as I measured a lot of connections today, I don.t think it was any voltage between the input pins and ground, but I might be wrong. I.ll check tomorrow, if it helps.

If you have connected 12-24 v to the centre two terminal on the bob you should have about 7-12v on the input pins.

if you have not got any volts on the inputs pins then you might have burnt the pcb track out on the board. I have seen this in the past.

So just get one thing at a time working. Those bobs although cheap I find to be quite good.

[Radu_Andrei]

Hi.
I just measured it, with and without the limits connected, and I get 0v between GND and all pins except P13, at this one I get 26v. P13 happens to be the probe, but I disconected the cable, and same reading.
I don.t know how I could have burned anything, as I just run the usb cable from the pc, and the 12v supply.

Yet the limits, estop and probe work fine. No more false signals. :)

[Radu_Andrei]

P.S. although the vfd is not connected just yet, on the bob I get 2 light on all the time, the 5v and 12-24v leds, and sometimes the relay led. It does not stay lit all the time. I don.t know if that.s bad or not, I just thought I should mention it.

[Clive S]

Yet the limits, estop and probe work fine. No more false signals. :)

Does this mean that all is working OK?

I am not sure why you have 26v on P13 !!