AM882 and Nema 23 Tuning

[EddyCurrent]

You've rolled several things up into one here.

1. Which wiring method for the motor did you choose ?
2. Setting the AM882 to match your motor
3. Setting the values in Mach to match your hardware
4. Tuning the system

What voltage is your power supply feeding the AM882 ?

With the AM882 you can configure it using the switches or using ProTuner, you said using switches so;

1. connect the motor for 8 lead parallel, see your motor data sheet.

2,Determine from the data sheet the max current for the parallel connection.
Set on the AM882, (SW1, SW2, SW3) to the next lowest setting of max motor current. e.g. if your motor data sheet said 3 amps then the next setting down on the AM882 is 2.7 amps.
i.e. SW1 OFF, SW2 ON, SW3 ON

Next leave SW4 OFF
Set the rotary switch to 0 (zero)

Set SW5 OFF, SW6 OFF, SW7 ON, this sets microstepping to 8 which is a popular setting.
Set SW8 OFF

3. In Mach 3 set the Velocity to 2000, acceleration to 200 (these will do for a start)

From your motor data sheet get the degree movement, normally 1.8 deg.
From your ball screw on the machine, get the thread pitch. (if you don't have this yet just use the value 5 as below)
calculate 'steps per' in Mach 3 as below using those values you just found.
Step and dir pulse, I've tried different values here and it seems to makes little difference with the AM882, leave as default.

step per = "The number of steps Mach3 must send for one unit of movement"

So for a metric machine one unit of movement = 1 mm;

a 1.8 deg motor has 360 / 1.8 = 200 steps per rev.
with microstepping set to 8, 200 x 8 = 1600 steps per rev
with a screw pitch of 5mm, 1mm movement = 1/5 turn
1600 x 0.2 = 320 steps per

All of that assumes a 1:1 ratio between motor and leadscrew
There are other settings in Mach3 like 'kernel speed' and I'm assuming you left these at default settings.


I would expect the motor to run smoothly now.

4. Tuning can only be done once the motor is fitted to the machine and it is ready to go.