Issues with stepper motors losing power

[JAZZCNC]

I am not sure what you mean by "The most common config is the opposite of yours"... My system works just like are describing. Perhaps you misunderstood what I wrote. Disable = no holding torque Enable = Holding torque the way I see it. The signal can be active low or active high, depending on some other things, but that's a different thing.

Excuse the pun, I think we are getting our wires crossed here.! What I meant was that the standard setup is that the drives have holding torque if the enable is NOT used and if the enable is used then holding torque is dropped when the state changes. The way you described it your drives are set so they need the enable signal to engage the torque, this is opposite to standard setup is what I meant.

You were saying earlier: "The enable won't drop the holding torque, it will only disable the drive outputs so they don't spin, they will still be locked"

The Enable signal controls the holding torque. If the Enable changes state (goes from low to high or high to low) it will enable or disable the driver which will apply or drop the holding torque. On most drivers, if the Enable is not connected (floating) the holding torque is applied and the driver is enabled. The motor is locked only when there is a holding torque (driver enabled). If the driver is disabled and there is no holding torque, the motor can't spin, not even if you apply step pulses. When the driver is enabled the motor is on holding torque but starts spinning as soon as step pulses are applied.

Yes that is the common way it works but it's not exclusive and some drives have the ability to maintain the holding torque when the enable changes it states, they just stop movement, this helps in applications like Z-axis, etc where don't want it to drop when an E-stop occurs, etc. Many servos and some closed-loop stepper drives offer this option with a parameter change.