Troubleshooting non responsive machine- Mach3/Syil x4

[IhateDoug]

Estop off

Red wire



White



Estop on

Red


White




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[IhateDoug]

So estop off and disconnected from the pc
White wire to pin 11 is 1v

Estop on is 0

By white wire I mean this pin



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[IhateDoug]

Cable removed from machine
Estop on 1v

Estop off 0


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[IhateDoug]

Machine and cable connected to pc and nothing shows in Mach 3


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[IhateDoug]

Plugged into pc
-Estop off
Red 11dc
White 0
-Estop On
R 0
W 0

Unplugged from pc 0-pin 11
-off 1dc
-on 1dc

Cord unplugged from machine
-off 1dc
-on 1dc


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[IhateDoug]

If I go white to pin 3 on the db25 cable I get 5v?


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[Doddy]

All very interesting. I'm getting confidence with your meter. Pin 3 is an output from the PC, likely pulled-high on the board - so measuring it disconnected from the PC at 5V makes sense to me.

Right, let's have some fun. Only proceed if you're happy that you can safely do this with your computer printer port (or at the end of the cable that you can plug into the printer port) - rather depends on whether you can insert a pin or socket (I forget) over/into a pin without cause a short circuit. If you have a spare DB25 connector of the correct gender it's a lot easier.

FOR CLARITY - this is done only with the computer, not with the machine connected.

What I'd be interested in is whether you can connect the pin 11 on the PC side to 0v or 5v. You don't have 5V available as-such on the parallel port, but you do have 0V. A cunning alternative is to use the X-DIR OUTPUT from the PC and use this to drive the E-STOP input, simply - short pin 17 and pin 11 on the DB25 connector - without shorting any other pin!!

If you're satisfied that you can do this safely/sensibly, disable the ESTOP input on the mach3 Inputs, then you can use cursor left / cursor right to change the e-stop signal on the printer port. Use the diagnostic screen to verify the state of this (I've not used mach3 for a long while - I expect you can also see the state of the Direction signal on P17 as well).

If you can verify that, then I think the problem can be localised to the BOB.

[Doddy]

Conscious that OP is viewing this, I need to post the "FOR CLARITY" bit separately...

The above step is on the computer ONLY, without the machine connected.

[IhateDoug]

I disabled estop in Mach 3 and have jumped pin 11 and 17

Unsure what now - nothing shows on the diagnostics tab?


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[Doddy]

So, my thoughts are - with the other end of the cable plugged into the computer(?) that any output on pin 17 (the X-Direction pin) will be driving the E-Stop input into Mach3. By moving the X-Axis one way you'll set the X-Dir pin to +5V, by moving the other direction you'll set the X-Dir pin to 0V. You might have to do this from the "Run" page/tab on Mach 3... then head to the diagnostic page to witness the setting of the pin-11 input (estop). Sounds obvious, but with moving the axis in one direction, pin 11 input should be active, and in the other direction pin 11 should be in-active. This is just intended to verify the behaviour of the PC/motherboard, and later to verify the binding of the pin to the e-stop input.