Jim, yes totally agree with you and the advice you gave was very good, sorry if it came across otherwise.

Hood

Hi all,

My x-axis is still not working.

I checked each on my switches (activiated them by hand) and they all turn on and off properly in the diagnostic screen of Mach3.

I changed the "dir step", to X instead of the check mark.

I checked the motor connections and it looks to me hooked up correctly for that motor, A phase=black wire, A- phase=green wire, B phase=red wire, B- phase=blue wire.

The x-axis is still only moving towards the switch when I jog, it is not reversing. I am attaching some screen shots for you to examin. Please let me know if there are any other screen shot you would like to see.

Thanks,
rene

What you need to do is disconnect your parallel port cable from your breakout board and put a volt meter between pin 3 and a ground pin. Then you want to Jog the X axis one way then the other and you should see the Volateg go between 5v and 0v as you change directions. If you see this then Mach to your cable end is OK and you need to start looking at your breakout and drive. Easiest way to check next is to swap out the Y drive for the X drive and see if the problem follows the drive. If it does then looks like you have a bad drive. If it doesnt then it could be your breakout.
 I notice you have output 1 active in the screenshot, do you need this? if so you dont have any pin asigned to it, if not then best to disable it.
Hood

Hi All,

I have not been able to work on my motor problem until today.  I tried to set the step dir to active high as suggested on cnczone and it made no difference.  I also tried to re-making the connection and it also made no difference.

I checked the dir output from the bob board to see if I get a + and - voltage coming from Mach3.  I did so on the x axis and when I jogged x- the voltage was 2.47v, when I jogged x+ the voltage was 0.00v.  When I checked the same for the y axis I got the oppisite, y- gave my 0.000v and y+ gave me 2.47v.  So, I concluded that the output voltages are ok.

I then swapped the x Gecko drive with the y Gecko drive to see if the problem follows with the drive.  To my suprise, the problem did follow. There is a problem with my Gecko driver.

I am going to call them tomorrow and see about fixing it or other suggestion.

Thanks for the help I'll keep you posted.

Rene

Hi All,

The x-axis turning in only one dirction  problem has now been solved.  It turned out to be a bad G203V drive.  I sent it back to Gecko and they said that it had a "defective opto isolator", that sometimes they get a bad one from their sources.  I appreciate all the help everyone given me.  I am disappointed at how much time I spent trying to figure out the problem, my machine should have been up running over the Christmas holidays and now I am well into January, live and learn.

So, I am now able to home all my axis but I think I still need to set up my soft limits. Mach3  comes loaded with a couple of G-coded programs.  I ran a couple of them but a few times they went beyond my machine travel and I had to shut my machine down.  I built the standard Rockcliff router, which I believe has 18x24x6 inches of travel.  Do I then just set up my soft limits to these values?  I looks like the values are suppose to be in metric because there have numbers like 100 and 200?

Again, thanks for all the help, I still need a long ways to go before I can actually start cutting material.  I see that there are share files on this site but can I get any g-coded programs here?  I still need to learn how to convert a dxf file into g-code.  I am using solidworks and solidcam.  I have experience with solidworks but none with solidcam. I really need to come up to speed on solidcam but there are not alot of tutorials out there.

Thanks,
rene

SoftLimits in Mach are whatever units your machine is set up in, ie if you are using Inch then thats what it is. If your physical limits are at the extremes of the travel then setup is fairly straightforward, that is if you home to the lower left of your work envelope. If thats the case then all you do is enter 0 for X and Y min and then the travel of your table is the Max on X and Y. You can set up a slow zone so that Mach has time to decelerate before it hits the physical limit.
Hood

Oh Forgot to say the Z is slightly different in that 0 is the Max and minus Z travel is the minimum.
Hood