Stepper wiring/colour coding

**rwb97** · 22-06-2014

Okey Dokey, now we're getting somewhere! The X and Y axes are working, all be it rather noisily at low speeds, but I'm sure that's something that can be fixed in motor tuning later. The problem was that in the motor tuning page there were no values in the for step pulse or direction pulse, so I set them both to 5 and workey workey! Anyone got any tips to make things run smoother? (I am aware that this driver board isn't the best example of good quality, but I'm sure theres a fair deal I can do by playing with motor tuning etc... the problems are that its very noisy and rough at slow speeds, but quieter when at high speeds (It actually sounds like I expect it to!) however there is then a regular clicking. Is this step skipping? Thanks very much for the help, I really appreciate it and now have something I can work with!

**JAZZCNC** · 22-06-2014

I guess you are running these motors on the bench.? If so then they can run rough sometimes when off the machine, it's resonance try clamping them down.! . . . BUT Still there are things you need to set in mach to get them to run something like smooth and not stall(miss steps).

Set the steps Per to match the setup you will run the machine at SO say for instance your going to run 5mm pitch ballscrew then Divide the micro stepping you set the drives to by the pitch. IE 800MS/5mm= 160 in Steps per. This will give you the correct amount of movement and dial the motors in something like correct. Then set the Velocity and Acceleration to sensible figure of 1000 & 300 respectively.

This should give you some thing like smooth movement from motors. Don't set the drive micro stepping to 200 which is the amount of steps of the motors, this will be classed as full stepping which can make motors run rough. Set it higher and you will get smoother running motors. 800 & 1600 are good figures but be aware the higher you go the more pulses required and slower the machine unless you up the Kernal speed in Mach3. Don't set Kernal higher than 45Khz otherwise mach3 can become unstable and could crash machine.

With only 24V you won't get much more than 2000mm/min velocity and 600S/S acceleration.

**rwb97** · 22-06-2014

Yeah, just on the bench currently, but stuck them on some bubble wrap, made a whole load of difference. I had to leave the XP machine as it just couldn't cope, even with the kernels set at 25Khz, but I'll install it on my main PC tonight and look forward to trying your suggestions! Thanks very much.

**JAZZCNC** · 22-06-2014

Originally Posted by rwb97

I had to leave the XP machine as it just couldn't cope, even with the kernels set at 25Khz, but I'll install it on my main PC tonight and look forward to trying your suggestions! Thanks very much.

Don't set the Kernal speed higher than 25Khz if it does everything you want which it will with just 24V. The Kernal speed isn't directly related to how fast your PC is but more how good your parallel port is. I've seen some high spec PC's that just can't touch some much lower spec PC's because they have fast clean pulses coming from the Parallel port.
The further away from 25Khz you set the Kernal the more chance you will have for trouble.!

**rwb97** · 22-06-2014

Ahhh that's interesting, thanks for clearing that up!

**JAZZCNC** · 22-06-2014

If you want to test how good your parallel port is then run the Driver test in Mach3 folder.! . . . Look for file called Driver test.!! . . . This will show better if your PP is up to speed.?

**cropwell** · 23-06-2014

Just another thought about pins :- the enable pins for the axes might be better set high, even though the TB6560 has internal pull-up resistors, a floating pin could cause problems. X=4, Y-17 and Z = 5.