ROUTOUT CNC / ROUTOUTCNC Driver Wanted

[Mxml]

Hi John, I’ve wired everything up but the stepper only moves in one direction. The BoB remains unchanged, the pulse/rev matches the BoB at 1600, stepper current is just under the stepper’s rated current, and logic voltage is 5v. Any ideas? Thanks

[Mxml]

In case it is to do with the DIR circuit, when jogging in the direction that does work (-X), the DIR pin is reading 5Vdc on my multimeter. When I jog in the other direction, which doesn’t move the stepper at all, I’m getting a reading of 45mV.

[JohnHaine]

If you can in the controller (Mach3? ) try changing the sense of the step pulses in configuration.

[Mxml]

Figured it out - In Mach3 config > Port and Pins I had to tick Step Low Active... At that point the stepper was running at normal speed in one direction and really slowly in the other direction. Then realised I had incorrectly wired a ground needed by the routoutcnc motherboard (BoB). The motherboard has two GND pins and I was grounding one only (the wrong one). I switched it to the other GND and everything started working.

Thanks again for your help :)

This is a Routout cnc motherboard V2.1 and a Stepperonline DM542T driver and CNC4YOU 1.5Nm Nema23, on a Denford Novamill running Mach3 via a UC100 motion controller. I am using a stepper online 36V 400W power supply. The routout cnc motherboard is still powering the Y and Z axes - the new setup is currently for the X axis only.

[JohnHaine]

Coincidentally I'm using DM542 drivers and UC100 on my Novamill. Glad you're now in business.

[Mxml]

Ha no way! Yeah I love my novamill. I bought it for 1650 quid a few years ago, it was a high price but was in good nick, converted to Mach3 already and included the computer, tooling etc. Ever since I started using it it would occasionally skips steps on the X and Y and destroy my work, so I recently upgraded the steppers to those 1.5Nm ones and subsequently blew my driver. If all works out now I will fall back in love with it. I saw one on eBay the other day for 1000 quid buy it now - was tempted to get one and just replace the big black box with an Xpro V5. The only confusing thing would have been figuring out the spindle control, as it would need to be done with a physical switch and pot rather than any VFD tomfoolery... or at least that is beyond me. Also, why on earth would I need two mills.

[Mxml]

Actually one last question now I know you about your machine - if you have the original Z stepper, (mine's original, HY200 3424 0310) how many amps are you running it at? I know they are rated for 3.1A but whoever converted my novamill to mach3 set the driver at around 1.5A, even though s/he had 2.5A available, and I'm wondering if there's a good reason for that.

[JohnHaine]

Actually I can't remember! Must be written down somewhere but not sure which notebook. 2.5A sounds fine if you can.

[Mxml]

Thanks

[magicniner]

I upgraded an old 12v Routout CNC 3 axis box to 4 axis around 10 years ago, the signals are there to run other stepper drivers but after experimenting with some cheap drivers I was lucky enough to get the last new old stock matching board from Routout CNC.
If I found myself in the same situation again I would use a modern buffered breakout board (the Routout CNC breakout board provides no electrical protection either way) an decent drivers as the cost would not amount to much and the results would be far better than the original, the original box is still working for the gentleman who bought my desktop mill around 5 years ago but even he has seen the shortcomings of the low power output and is upgrading to a modern self-build box.