I connected an Old PC 1.2GHz running Mach3 to a Breakout Board (Attached), then the board to an Allen Bradley Ultra-100(1398-DDM-005) Servo Drive, that is connected to an Allen Bradley Y-1002-1 Servo Motor (Incremental 2000 lines/revolution encoder).

The board only has Step+ / Dir+ and Com per axis. However the Drive J1 plug has the following pin-out for the Auxiliary Encoder:
pin 14 (AX+/CW+/STEP+) = Auxiliary Encoder Channel A+
pin 15 (AX-/CW-/STEP-) = Auxiliary Encoder Channel A-
pin 16 (BX+/CCW+/DIR+) = Auxiliary Encoder Channel B+
pin 17 (BX-/CCW-/DIR-) = Auxiliary Encoder Channel B-
pin 18 (IX+) = Auxiliary Encoder Channel I+
pin 19 (IX-) = Auxiliary Encoder Channel I-

So I connected the Board's Step+ to pin 14 and Dir+ to pin 16, and using Ultra-Master I connected to the Drive using its serial port and setup the Operation Mode to be: Follower: Step and Direction. After setting the velocity at maximum on Mach3, I only got 270 RPM although the motor is 4500 RPM rated. I've got 4320 RPM by going into the Drive Parameter on the Follower tab and gearing it to 16:1. Of course, 16 x 270 is 4320! I don't think is right to gear a motor that much...

Now the questions:
1 - Is the PC or Mach3 not fast enough to send those pulses? It's only 01 axis trial...
2 - Does the motor encoder has too much resolution for the program?
3 - Or is the Board I've got so cheap and it does not have Step- and Dir-?
4 - How important is Step- Dir- IX+ IX-? And what are they for?
5 - What types of pulses do the PLCs and controllers send to the Drive on the industry?
6 - If I do need a much better Motion Control card with Step+- and Dir+-, does anybody know a good source with a fair price?

Allen Bradley calls the connection I've made "External Step/Direction Interface via Single-Ended TTL Line Drivers (not recommended)".
What I would like to do is: "External Step/Direction Interface via TTL Differential Line Drivers (recommended)", but for that the controller must have Step- and Dir-.

Thanks in advance!
Luiz

Luiz, you could add a differential line driver between the BOB and the AB drive.  This will convert your single ended Step and direction signals to Step + and Step -  Direction + and Direction -.  I don't know of any BOBs right now that offer double ended outputs for step and direction.  It should work fine single ended but I think the biggest advantage in making it differential would be noise immunity.  As far as the encoder for the job, this will effect your resolution and I wouldn't want to go higher than 35KHz with a parallel port which will in turn limit your speed.  Mach can go to 100KHz but if the hardware your using (PC/BOB) can pull it off or not is another story.  I would look at the Smooth Stepper and a differential line driver.  http://www.warp9td.com/index.php  and I saw some line drivers on ebay a while back.  I'm setting up a lathe right now with AB drives and motors and this is the hardware I'll be using.

Brett

Thanks Brett! What do you think of this board? Its manual doesn't describe the frequency etc...
http://cgi.ebay.com/MACH-3-EMC-2-CNC-Breakout-Board-DB25-Board-Only-/180670237955?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a10c90d03
What about this one?: http://dynomotion.com/Help/SchematicsKFLOP/ConnectorsKFLOP.htm
Do you think I should go to a USB, Ethernet or PCI Motion Controller? The Drive and Motor of the "Subject" of the forum are only for testing and self teaching. But I have bigger AB Ultra 100s and bigger motors...

Luiz

Luiz. i can't comment on either of those.  I have never used either of them.  I'll be using a PMDX 126 on the lathe.  It doesn't have differential outputs for the step and direction but adding a line driver will cure that.  There are many options for BOBs and motion controllers and new ones being added everyday it seems.  I can't suggest any for you, I can only tell you what I'll be using.  I chose what I thought would be the best options for my machine.  You'll have to do your homework and decide for yourself what would be best for you.

Brett

LantonioA,

I have the a similar Allen-Bradley setup for a rotary A-axis and I'm having the EXACT same problem!

The inputs are going like gangbusters and if I run the motor through Ultraware it's fast.  BUT trying to run the motor through Mach3 is dead slow no matter how much I tweak the motor tuning in Mach3.  I'm using step/direction

I'm absolutely sure there is a fix that doesn't require fudging with additional boards, and the current setup works perfectly with the other step/direction motors I have.  It's just this Allen Bradley drive's configuration that's the problem.

Have you had any luck?

Charles, how are you driveing the outputs from Mach to the drive?  Parallel port, smooth stepper, any breakout boards?

Brett

I fortunately found the problem.  It wasn't with Mach3, it was with the Allen-Bradley drive. 

LantonioA hit upon the source of my problem.  My drive (which I just received) has an internal gear reduction that has to be put into the drive controller.

I did that and things are now looking much better!

Thanks!

 

Have sent you a personal message.

Brett

LantonioA,

I have the a similar Allen-Bradley setup for a rotary A-axis and I'm having the EXACT same problem!

The inputs are going like gangbusters and if I run the motor through Ultraware it's fast.  BUT trying to run the motor through Mach3 is dead slow no matter how much I tweak the motor tuning in Mach3.  I'm using step/direction

I'm absolutely sure there is a fix that doesn't require fudging with additional boards, and the current setup works perfectly with the other step/direction motors I have.  It's just this Allen Bradley drive's configuration that's the problem.

Have you had any luck?

Sorry for the delay... I was not involved on my projects for quite a while... No luck with that snail board...

After I built a fast PC and seeing that my previous BOB couldn't get my motor to run any faster (Believe me, I've tried everything plus I didn't want to run a motor with 16:1 electronic gearing. "What if you want to run 10 RPM? Set the commanded RPM to 0.625?"). Well, I've got brave enough and bought an used Galil DMC-2143 on Ebay several months ago (wish I bought 2) and after days of hooking it up, i finally got it to work; first with STEP and DIR and I had enough speed to fault the drive! (Wish I got rid of the first BOB a lot sooner). Second, I wanted to have Mach3 to read the feedback, not the commanded position. After few more day of making cables, connectors etc, I finally got it to work on Torque Command (could not get it to work with Position or Velocity Command "yet"). With Velocity Command, the Servo Motor got way too "violent" that it would fault the drive. I had to turn the Accel and Decel  down so much to get it to work, that it got too "mellow" (it turned 10 extra turns to get to a stop and another 10 to get up to speed; it looked like it was running on rubber band)... I guess I'll leave at Torque Command, but when I click "Reset" on Mach3, the motor still has that High Frequency noise but is free to turn, unlike the Velocity Command that locks the motor...

You probably have a slow snail card like I did, because I had not any speed problems with the Galil Card. But if you don't mind the excessive electronic gearing... I will post a link on YouTube of my experiment soon! Feel free to ask any questions!

Thank you!