mach3 help

[D-man]

Hi guys, i recently bought a packge from zap ( http://www.slidesandballscrews.com/a...3686e83ee840f8 ) with the uniport.

For some reason i cant for the life of me get it to run/turn my motors.

does anyone have the same set up who would like to share the .xml file?

regards
Derek

[lateAtNight]

I have an optoport which looks to be the same thing setup wise.

Have you configured any of the output pins? Mach needs to know which pins are are for which axes, they are also all disabled by default when your first install i think. You need to go to Conifg > Pins and Ports and click on the motor tab.

Good reading:
http://www.finelinehair.com/home/Mach3Mill_Setup.pdf

and also the datasheet for the Uniport which tells you which pins are which.
http://www.slidesandballscrews.com/pdf/uniport.pdf

I'm a beginner with Mach myself... I only set it up (still am) about a week ago.

Also, pressing TAB brings up the jog window

Hope that helps,

Dave.

[D-man]

Yeah i have configured the pins to the best of my knowledge. I got the pin numbers from the Uniport board manual.

Even the Jog option doesnt move them they just buzz alot and hold the torque.

Did you set the pins on your drivers?

[D-man]

im starting to wonder if my LPT port is broke. is there anyway to test it?

[irving2008]

im starting to wonder if my LPT port is broke. is there anyway to test it?

Try a different LPT cable, there have been many examples where a supposedly good cable was the culprit...

[lateAtNight]

Good idea on the cable...

I don't use the LPT port myself (for a lack of one), but there are some settings in BIOS to do with the printer port. Try turning on EPP if it isn't already. However I don't think this is the cause, since it would probably work regardless if it was EPP or not. Worth a try though.

I have the same drives and the switches are OFF, OFF, ON, ON, OFF, OFF, ON, ON. This gives half current (my series wound motors only need half), and 1/8 stepping.

One last thing I would double and triple check the way you have wired the motors. And if you have tried parallel wiring, try series and vise versa.

Dave.

[D-man]

thanks guys,

My motor wiring is parallel and are wired as follows...
A+ = Yellow with White stripe & red
A- = yellow & Red with White stripe
B+ = Green with White stripe & Black
B- = green & black with white stripe.

I have just used normal wire for now to connect the drivers to the uniport but i read somwhere that would be fine for a test but replace them when they get installed.

Lateatnight - your switches i will try mine the same way but which way have you ran them? e.g pin 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8

[lateAtNight]

Yep 1 to 8.

Can't help with the wiring... Mine have different colours.

[D-man]

Wey managed to get the z-axis going but the rest will not move. going to recheck wires i will report back

[D-man]

nope for some reason they will not move! you can hear them trying but..

all pins are set as per the uniport manual too