Problems continue and don't know what to do

[Crazy L]

I think I might have an idea concerning the jog movements. I set frequency at 35000khz in ports n pins page, again, just following the set up, but I woke up this morning and thought I should change it back to 25000khz.

So I'll try that when I get in from work.

[JAZZCNC]

I think I might have an idea concerning the jog movements. I set frequency at 35000khz in ports n pins page, again, just following the set up, but I woke up this morning and thought I should change it back to 25000khz.

So I'll try that when I get in from work.

Don't mess around with the Kernal frequency going higher than 25K will only stress out the parallel port and cause other troubles.

You need to take things one step at a time and break the process into little steps. Mach3 won't do anything if the I/O pins are not set correctly so this is the first place to start.
Start with Safety first and wire in the E-stop if it has one. Find the pins it's connected to and enter pin # in E-stop Input.

Then start with getting movement, one axis at a time. Which by the sounds you have the correct pins set because got movement.

The next step is tuning them to move correctly in Motor tuning. The first setting to deal with is "Steps per". This will make it so moves the correct amount. The easiest way is to See the link Clive posted with my reply in another thread.
The second step is Acceleration and Velocity, Start with low numbers at first and slowly increase one at a time, never both together, and test until the motors Stall. Then back off 25%. If these numbers are too high the Motors will stall(whizzing/humming sound)
Good start numbers are (If using metric units) Velocity 500 Accel 250. Even the crappiest machines should reach those speeds without stalling motors.
Leave the Step pulse and Dir pulse = 0 unless you get erratic behavior.

From here it's up to you where to move onto next. But whichever you choose only ever work on one thing at a time until it works as you expect or desire.
Just remember that if the Pin # are not set correctly for Input or Output Mach3 won't know anything about it, so even if wired correctly on machine Mach will be oblivious to it.

[Crazy L]

Rob, I don't believe the spindle is a stepper motor.

Doddy, yes, that is my ethos, otherwise it gets confusing. My other hobbies all follow that mantra.

Clive and Jazz, many thanks, I will check that out, but not right now, because the wife and I are off to the pub for food, it's Christmas eve so the next couple of days will be solid with visits and visiting.

So while I'm on the subject. I wish you all a good Christmas and hope you have a merry ol time.

[Crazy L]

Hey guys, hope you all had a good Christmas.

Following your superior knowledge, I got everything working. I need to tweak the axis speeds though as in jog, it's all good, but if I rapid in MDI, they stall, but I now know how to do that.

I also have X going in reverse. So I have a question: When setting up the steps, when I tell it to move a distance and then it asks me how much it actually moved, should I have told it that moved in minus? I simply said how much it moved and didn't think anything of it at the time.

I got the spindle going with a bit of thinking. I hadn't enabled an output.

Anyway, a couple of tweaks here and there and she'll be all ship shape and ready for making stuff once again. I honestly couldn't have done it without the help you guys have given me.

I've written my settings down too, on paper, so should something ever happen, or I adjust something and need to un-adjust it, I have something to reference.

Happy new year to you all.

[cropwell]

I also have X going in reverse.

Have a look at the active high/low settings for the axis. If they are not out of kilter with the Y and Z then I would just swap either the A+, A- or the B+, B- at the driver for the X.

[JAZZCNC]

I also have X going in reverse.

If you have the Motor phases wired correctly IE A+ A- B+ B- and the drives wired Correctly IE: Step+ Step - Dir + Dir - then don't switch the active Hi / Lo because it can cause other issues with pulse edge etc depending on how drive is setup.
The easier way is to go into Homing / Limits and toggle Reversed, this will reverse the axis but not affect Pulse and Dir. You may need to toggle the Homing direction as well if it goes wrong way when homing.

So I have a question: When setting up the steps, when I tell it to move a distance and then it asks me how much it actually moved, should I have told it that moved in minus? I simply said how much it moved and didn't think anything of it at the time.

No doesn't matter. only needs to know distance moved.

I've written my settings down too, on paper, so should something ever happen, or I adjust something and need to un-adjust it, I have something to reference.

Thats always a good idea but when finished setting up also make a copy of the XML file which will be in Mach3 folder under same name as the profile name. Then if goes down at any time you just reinstall Mach3 copy the saved XML into folder and it will reload with all your settings ready to go.

[Crazy L]

thanks JazzCNC

It's been a while again as I had other things rear their head again, then this lockdown caper kicked off, and it's only now that I have rediscovered where i was at before. About to go and experiment with homing/limits

[Crazy L]

Thanks for all your help guys, I'm learning all the time.

I tweaked the axis stepping the other day to improve it a bit, making dimensions a bit more accurate. Upon machining a circle though, I have noticed it suffers at 3, 6, 9 and 12 o'clock, giving flat spots. Can I assume this could be a typical fault of the stepper motors or the board quality? Just a question really, trying to learn about this thing.

[Clive S]

Thanks for all your help guys, I'm learning all the time.

I tweaked the axis stepping the other day to improve it a bit, making dimensions a bit more accurate. Upon machining a circle though, I have noticed it suffers at 3, 6, 9 and 12 o'clock, giving flat spots. Can I assume this could be a typical fault of the stepper motors or the board quality? Just a question really, trying to learn about this thing.

Have you checked for back lash?

[dazp1976]

I think I might have an idea concerning the jog movements. I set frequency at 35000khz in ports n pins page, again, just following the set up, but I woke up this morning and thought I should change it back to 25000khz.

So I'll try that when I get in from work.

The higher you set the driver rev per number is when you need to mess with frequency because your max velocity available changes. That's when you need to change it to gain more available velocity. But.... with a parallel port board you should leave it as 25000 and set the driver number most suited.
For example at 25000khz if you have a 5mm pitch screw then with settings driver=2000 rev and motor=400 rev per then this gives around say 5000mm/min allowance (rough guess)
Then say settings of driver= 4000 and motor=800 the max drops to 2500mm/min available.
The allowable max available is prob slightly less than these but that's basically how it works.

I don't know what your screw pitch is but you'll notice that in my numbers based on a 5mm screw pitch the motors are set at 1/5th of the driver.
So a 4mm the motor will be set at 1/4 of the driver setting. A 2mm will be set at 1/2 what the driver is and so on. Then it's a case of fine tuning once it's close.