[James Newton]

You most certainly CAN blow up your computer with a fried driver and poor isolation. I have a bit of a different view on this... If you can't afford to lose your computer, your main machine, then /why on earth/ are you connecting it to anything like this? Old PC's will run Mach3 or whatever just fine and they are dime a dozen. Don't use your main computer to run a CNC or other machine. Just don't. That's dumb, frankly.

[cncneeb]

JAMES, advice taken. the name says it all. i am so newbie, i dont even know that this board could fry my computer with "poor isolation". i will certainly use cheap old computer to do this board.

and i have some more questions:
1. what is poor isolation?? did u mean the chips have to be grounded to the heatsink really well? or someting else?
2. can someone show me the part where the CURRENT REDUCTION FEATURE PART of the board that has to be disconnected?
3. can someone show me the power up mechanism that requires 2 power supplies, first turn on the logic then the main power? (who on earth created this board? and i didnt find the video about powering sequence in youtube)
4. PETSAT told me about bypass optocoupler, which in thread #217, clearly shown. but, i dont know which ones to be bypassed. the picture is a small part of the board. it says "remove the opto-coupler for each clock line and place a jumper wire in the dip socket to connect the 74HC14 to the clock pin directly". where are the "each clock line" and "the clock pin".



he has 5 axis, where he only uses 3 axis, so he jumped only 3 optos. but there are like 6 optoes there, right? im confused

5. can someone tell me what are these 4 series of 6 blue-white buttons ?



6. i will use nema17 steppers for this driver, and i am afraid of burning them. someone said somewhere about "reducing current", i think that is what i will need. can someone show me where it is on the board?

so many stupid questions, i know. but the name says it all, a total noob. but i will make a complete video about how to fix this board on youtube, once i am done with this board, so your efforts on helping will not be wasted. cheers, people

[cncneeb]

Hi all,

This search lead me here where after reading all the posts (THANK YOU ALL) I have made the following mods:

I CHANGED THE OSCILLATOR FREQUENCY

I have replaced capacitors on pin7 (silkscreened 102, i.e. 1000pF) with 3 smd capacitors salvaged from an old PC motherboard marked KE2 (i.e 150 pF)



CURRENT REDUCTION CIRCUIT REMOVAL

Like many people here I have also disabled the "clever current reduction circuit" (that apparently doesn't work as it should) The mod was simple I have just removed a resistor a transistor and the capacitor that form the circuit.



GROUNDED HEAT SINK

Heat sink is now Connected to pin 15 through the screw. A lead from one screw of every driver connected to the corresponding ground Pin 10 or/and 15 but NOT pin 6 (this is the 5V-GND - it should not be disturbed by additional driver currents!)



DESIGNED AN MADE A POWER DELAY CIRCUIT TO POWER ON & OFF THE BOARD

The main problem I had was the power sequence that was not right according to Toshoba's datasheet. In order to care for it I designed a small circuit to power up and down the board in a safe way.
To do that I removed the two voltage regulators (7812 and 7805) from the board and supplied the 5 and 12 volts from the new power supply circuit. This power supply circuit also supplies 30 volts for the motors and operates as follows:
When S1 is turned to ON position, it gives a 2 sec delay between 5V and 30 V power to the chip and when S1 is switched OFF it turns 30V off instantly and turns off 5V after 2 seconds.



I have tested the circuit and it works (so far) without any problems.
If anyone spots any flaws on that I will be happy to discuss and modify it.

Petros

1. CHANGE OSCILATOR FREQUENCY
EASY to change the caps, they are below the heatsink

2. CURRENT REDUCTION CIRCUIT REMOVAL
these are the parts i dont get .can i just remove the "3 footing" transistor that isclose to the 6560 chip and that disconnects this circuit of current reduction??

3. GROUNDED HEAT SINK
EASY, done

4. DESIGNED AN MADE A POWER DELAY CIRCUIT TO POWER ON & OFF THE BOARD
holly crack! that is some serious thing you are doing right there! can i just follow the instructions of power up sequence? they are nowhere to be found in youtube too

5. I DONT FIND ANY OPTOCOUPLER BYPASSING IN YOUR SOLUTION. DID U NOT DO IT? NO IMPLEMENTATION OF IC 74HC14?

[petsat]

cncneeb, I did not use another 74HC14, I have bypassed all optocouplers and removed the current limiting components (transistor,capacitor and resistor) as you see in the following sketch.

Attachment 290220

Notice the different bypass to the enable opto!!!

if the board you have is like the one in the first post you can unplug the PC817 opto-isolator from the socket and connect what was the diodes cathode connector to the transistors collector connector as in the picture in post 217 on page 19.
In my board (3 axis) the optos were as you can see in the next photo.

Attachment 290222

THERE IS NO GUARANTEE THAT YOURS IS THE SAME as the 4 axis that I show next!

Attachment 290224

You have to figure out the connections following the schematis to find out which opto is step, direction and enable.

Attachment 290226

To identify pins and bypass the pc817 use the following schematic for step and direction (NOTE THE DIFFERENCE IN ENABLE BYPASS THOUGH)

Attachment 290228

POWER SEQUENCE

The 6560, according to the manufacturer (Toshiba) requires to get the 5V first and later it will accept the motor voltage.

Attachment 290242

On my board the 6560 driver ics are getting 12v and 5 v from the motor supply through 12 and 5v regulators respectively. This is a poor design as the 12V and 5 V regulators along with their capacitors perform a delay line for the 5V supply. It takes some milliseconds until the 5V is stable on the 6560 drivers. On the other hand, the Motor supply is directed to the drivers instantly.

Attachment 290234

An easy but unsafe option would be to remove the regulators and using external power supplies to switch on anf off manually the 5 volts and 12 volts respectivelly. BUT I am sure that I will forget the sequence and make smoke...
For this reason I designed the power supply circuit you mentioned.



I made it using stripboard as you can see in the next photo.

Attachment 290236

As you can see it uses a 555 IC, 2 relays, 3 transistors (2n2222), a voltage regulator (7805) some diodes and resistors.
I made it, it works nicely and in 6 months time it proved to be safe for the 6560 ICs.

Attachment 290240

I hope I helped

[A_Camera]

DID YOU SAY "BLOWING UP YOUR COMPUTER"?!?!?!?!
this is what i fear the most. did someone really ever blow his computer by using this board? i really have to be super careful with this chinese stuff

There is ALWAYS a risk for serious damage, even fatal, to your computer if you are running different systems at different GND level. That's why you simply must have proper optical isolation. I would not even dream about connecting that card to my main computer if that computer is critical for me in any ways. When I used that card I had it connected to a computer which I could afford to blow up and was counting on it. It did not blow up, but one parallel port card did go up in smoke. If I had used the PC's main board parallel port then it would have died. Now, only a cheap card needed to be changed. On the other hand, I knew about the risks...

But generally, no problem if it is Chinese, just this card is a bad design, so you must be aware of the risks. That's the idea about optical isolation... to protect the equipment from each other.

Edit:

One thing I forgot to mention also about the opto couplers used in this card is that those 817 couplers are EXTREMELY slow, so they are not suitable at all in these type of equipment, where fast pulses are necessary. For this reason, these cards can NEVER EVER run as fast as one would wish. If you run too fast the pulses will merge after the opto couplers, resulting in missing steps. So, either the opto couplers should be removed all together, or at least replaced by some other, faster type.

Also the power supply for the logic and the fan is wrong. The 12V stabilizer is connected directly to the 24V motor supply and the output of the 12V is driving the fan as well as feeding the 5V regulator, so the 12V stabilizer gets very hot and you can't feed your motors with anything more than 24V.

In other words, very few things are right in these cards. You fix one error and there is the next. You can work forever with this card and never get it right, or you practically make so many changes that you might as well build your own from scratch.

[durango100]

sorry i did not explain my self. what i meant to say, i change the DIP settings limitting current up to 50%, 75% works fine too, but when i let 100% of the current ... it blows

[cncneeb]

PETSAT, HOLLY CRACK! THANKS FOR THIS REPLY! THIS DETAILS ARE FRIGGIN AWESOME! i will look into this, in detailed manner, and come up with several more questions in future.

for now, my questions are;
1. i will use nema17 steppers for this driver, and i am afraid of burning them with this board which is rated 3.5A. someone, somewhere, i dont remember, talked about "reducing current" from the board, and i think that is what i will need. is the current limiting comes from the board or from the mach3 setting? or i dont need to reduce the current and hook everything up and everything is alright?
2. how do i do proper optic isolation with this board which is known to be troublemaker? A_CAMERA said it could burn everything including my laptop.
3. my notebook is cheap and i will gladly use it for this cnc board. but, it has 15pins serial only. can i buy serial converter 25pin to 15pin and get it to work with Mach3? (sorry, this is unrelated, but i have searched anywhere, they dont come with an answer)
4. what are these buttons? and how do i operate them? do they have some kinda sequence to turn on?

Attachment 290292

[aarggh]

Didn't foll

sorry i did not explain my self. what i meant to say, i change the DIP settings limitting current up to 50%, 75% works fine too, but when i let 100% of the current ... it blows

low the unusual and mandatory power up/down sequence? Or did the chips overheat too quickly?

cheers, Ian

[cncneeb]

AARGGH, can you show me the thread where the detailed power up/down sequence is shown?i dont understand what are Vma/b and Vdd. and i am curious whether DURANGO do follow the sequence or not, too. he only said he set the DIP to 50-75%

[aarggh]

AARGGH, can you show me the thread where the detailed power up/down sequence is shown?i dont understand what are Vma/b and Vdd. and i am curious whether DURANGO do follow the sequence or not, too. he only said he set the DIP to 50-75%

The info is in this thread in the posts from yesterday, and more in depth details earlier on quite a few times. Basically, the inherent problem with the IC design is per the manufacturers design notes, is the logic must be powered up and allow to stabilise before power is applied to the steppers, and when switching the systems off, the steppers must be powered off first, then the logic.

The problem with most of these boards is that the 5V rail is fed from the same power supply the steppers are so both are coming online simultaneously, but as the logic's supply is also being reduced via voltage regulators, this further introduces a finite propogation delay so the logic supply lags the steppers supply, end result being the steppers are being energised before the logic has stabilised, and at power-off both are cut simultaneously, hence why the drivers randomly explode.

And here's another rub, for all those who are trying to clean up the noise filtering back into the controller, and smooth the power supply by changing the values of caps, that further increases the latency.

I don't intimately follow the TB6560 threads, as I just try and steer people away from them to avoid the litany of problems that comes with such a sub-standard, and in most cases, a completely unusable controller.

I would strongly suspect based on all the threads for these boards across all the forums and blogs I know, that less than 5% of people who buy these boards actually end up with a working board, let alone one that actually works and performs really good. Of those who have it working fine in their opinion, I also strongly suspect if they compared it to a Gecko or similar driver, their tune would change very fast once they experience what a real, well-designed controller performs like.

cheers, Ian

[A_Camera]

AARGGH, can you show me the thread where the detailed power up/down sequence is shown?i dont understand what are Vma/b and Vdd. and i am curious whether DURANGO do follow the sequence or not, too. he only said he set the DIP to 50-75%

The proper power on / power off sequence is that logic power (+5V) must be on and stable BEFORE the motor power comes on and the opposite when you switch the machine off, i.e. the motor power must be switched off BEFORE the logic (+5V). You can do that manually, but you need to modify the card and you need to have VERY high discipline. You can't solve that through simply delay circuits because of the switch off sequence, unless you have a very large capacitor which keeps the logic power on even after the motor power is switched off, if both the logic and the motor gets the power from the same single supply. With separate supply it is easier but you still need to modify the card and separate the logic and the motor supply. The power on/off sequence is described in the Toshiba reference documentation of the 6560.

[A_Camera]

I would strongly suspect based on all the threads for these boards across all the forums and blogs I know, that less than 5% of people who buy these boards actually end up with a working board, let alone one that actually works and performs really good. Of those who have it working fine in their opinion, I also strongly suspect if they compared it to a Gecko or similar driver, their tune would change very fast once they experience what a real, well-designed controller performs like.

I think you are wrong and in reality sooner or later everyone realize that this card and chip is just rubbish. It is not only the card itself, but the internal design of the chip, the 6560, is so bad that there is no way anyone can fix it properly. OK, it may work for some, but in reality, I think that all those people either don't have a good enough hearing, or use it in a places or applications where it does not matter or simply don't care. I actually don't believe that there is a single person who managed to fix this card properly, even if they claim to have done it. Maybe they are not lying, but don't have the right reference as how it could be done with a different driver, and I don't even mean expensive drivers like the Gecko, but other, cheap Chinese drivers, like the one I changed to.

Another thing which surprises me is the huge number of people with practically zero electronic knowledge who are buying these cards and are trying to fix them. I don't understand that kind of optimism unless the aim is to play with the electronics and to learn about it. The thing is that once all the absolute necessary modifications are done you have practically made a new card, and that card with all the modifications and extra wires, piggy back cards and cut traces the "new" redesigned card is probably very noise sensitive, looks ugly very much just something temporary.

[petsat]

PETSAT, HOLLY CRACK! THANKS FOR THIS REPLY! THIS DETAILS ARE FRIGGIN AWESOME! i will look into this, in detailed manner, and come up with several more questions in future.

for now, my questions are;
1. i will use nema17 steppers for this driver, and i am afraid of burning them with this board which is rated 3.5A. someone, somewhere, i dont remember, talked about "reducing current" from the board, and i think that is what i will need. is the current limiting comes from the board or from the mach3 setting? or i dont need to reduce the current and hook everything up and everything is alright?
2. how do i do proper optic isolation with this board which is known to be troublemaker? A_CAMERA said it could burn everything including my laptop.
3. my notebook is cheap and i will gladly use it for this cnc board. but, it has 15pins serial only. can i buy serial converter 25pin to 15pin and get it to work with Mach3? (sorry, this is unrelated, but i have searched anywhere, they dont come with an answer)
4. what are these buttons? and how do i operate them? do they have some kinda sequence to turn on?

Attachment 290292

cncneeb, some short answers to your questions:

1. i will use nema17 steppers for this driver, and i am afraid of burning them with this board which is rated 3.5A. someone, somewhere, i dont remember, talked about "reducing current" from the board, and i think that is what i will need. is the current limiting comes from the board or from the mach3 setting? or i dont need to reduce the current and hook everything up and everything is alright?

The board can provide a max current of 3.5A if your motors require 2A they will get 2A they will not burn unless there is a short circuit somewhere and even then the board will die before the motors.
You can reduce current from the DIP switches on the board. Read further down for details.

2. how do i do proper optic isolation with this board which is known to be troublemaker? A_CAMERA said it could burn everything including my laptop.


A_CAMERA is wright! YOU MIGHT BURN YOUR COMPUTER! As far as I know there is no (proper) way to isolate it if you bypass the optos.

A small detail here:
the board and the computer share GROUND. Even with the optos on a short circuit can find its way through the ground and fry your computer

3. my notebook is cheap and i will gladly use it for this cnc board. but, it has 15pins serial only. can i buy serial converter 25pin to 15pin and get it to work with Mach3?

Short answer: I dont know! It might, but I bet it will not!

You will find the 6560 datasheet here:
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/genera...ftware-66.html.

Power sequence details are at p.28. Details for the Current limiting resistor at p.29
The idea behind the limiting resistor: Proper decay made behaviour requires correct sense resistor selection. This sets maximum motor current. I = V/R. Where reference V=0.5V so R=0.5 Ohms = 1A, 0.25=2A, 0.15=3.3A etc
see next sketch
Attachment 290366

4. what are these buttons? and how do i operate them? do they have some kinda sequence to turn on?

For the DIP switches settings on your board you will find info on the CD that came with it. It should be a table like the following:

Dip settings:
|--------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------|----------------------------------|
|Current Setting__________|Decay Mode Settings________|MicroStep Settings_____|
|________sw1_____sw2___|_________sw3___sw4______|_ ________sw5_____sw6|
|--------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------|----------------------------------|
|100% sw1 ON____sw2 ON_|FAST___sw3 ON____sw4ON__|1________ON_____ON |
|75% sw1 ON_____sw2 OFF|25%____sw3 ON___sw4 OFF__|1/2______ON_____OFF|
|50% sw1 OFF____sw2 ON_|50%____sw3 OFF__sw4ON___|1/8______OFF_____OFF|
|25% sw1 OFF____sw2 OFF|SLOW___sw3 OFF___sw4 OFF|1/16_____OFF_____ON |
|--------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------|----------------------------------|

I have set mine: ON OFF (75%) ON ON (fast) ON OFF (half step)

Have fun

Petsat

[aarggh]

I think you are wrong and in reality sooner or later everyone realize that this card and chip is just rubbish.

I was being generous as we've had some people here get quite "uppity" that their boards work perfectly fine.Which you and I know can't be right which is why I qualified my remarks.

cheers, Ian

[A_Camera]

2. how do i do proper optic isolation with this board which is known to be troublemaker?

There is NO WAY you can fix a proper optical isolation if you are using that card, unless you rebuild it completely or add another board.

A_CAMERA said it could burn everything including my laptop.

Yes, that is fact. Another fact is that unless I had deep electronic knowledge, I would not have spent more than 10 minutes with this card. I don't want to sound rude, but you don't seem to have the level of electronic knowledge necessary to fix this card. Give it up before you spent a fortune on trying to fix it. It is better to save that money and time and spend it on something which has a CONSIDERABLY higher probability of working right out of the box, like for example the drivers I am using. I don't want to discourage you, if you think this is challenging and you believe you can do it, well... good luck. But if you want to have a working CNC in a reasonable time frame than get something else.

3. my notebook is cheap and i will gladly use it for this cnc board. but, it has 15pins serial only. can i buy serial converter 25pin to 15pin and get it to work with Mach3? (sorry, this is unrelated, but i have searched anywhere, they dont come with an answer)

I don't know any 15-pin serial port. Serial ports have normally 9 or 25 pin interfaces. Never the less, you can't convert a serial port to parallel and make a CNC work with that. CNC motion control is working totally differently, in motion control you need to control all pins individually in real time and you can't do that using a serial port, not even if you add a converter. What you need is a PCMCIA parallel card, maybe it would work with that, though there is no laptop support for Mach3. One reason is that laptops, especially older ones, are too slow and the other is that most of them have too low logic levels to drive motion control cards and they can neither provide enough voltage nor enough current to drive the necessary opto isolators.

[aarggh]

If those 15 pins are in three rows, then that's a video out port. If it is, do NOT plug anything into that except another monitor unless you want to possibly fry the GPU circuitry.

cheers, Ian

[cncneeb]

PETSAT, thank you very much for all the detailed answers! u should be the master of this board, manufacture, and sell it, so the chinese can stop making this board so lamey and sell them as firecrackers. i think your board which is fixed very well, deserves to be sold in high price, maybe 40% of the gecko. i have DM542 boards just arrived, and i will get back to this board when i am "alreadt smart" with them. i have ZERO knowledge of CNC stuffs, and i have just seen stepper motor for the first time. i am really afraid of burning any $$$ (i think i have just done it by buying this board) much further. l will get back with this later, and when im done fixing it, i will make a video in youtube, with much credit given to u, A_camera, aarrgggh, duranggo, felix_z. thank you for your nice answers and infos, PETSAT


AARRGGGH, thanks for all the answer, and infos. i think im done with this board for now, since even PETSAT said "there is no way of doing proper isolation if we bypass the optos". i dont wanna burm my computer with this chinese trouble maker. i will learn cnc ins and outs with my " have just arrived" DM542 boards from CHINA. i think it is much saver. we should have steered people away from buying this board. but when people have bought, well... we help them if they have no other board available. i will come back to this board when i think im smart enough. but i have to say thanks for the answerd and infos, man.

A_CAMERA, i agree with your statement "just stay away if you are not deep in electronics". i was going to play with this board, but when both you and PETSAT said that it couldbdefinitely burn computer, i think i will be back when i am an expert with my DM542 (similar to yours from wantai) that have just arrived. we should steer people away from buying this chinese fireworks, but if they have fallen to the trap, we should help lend a hand, and let them decide whether it is worth it or not, with the computer being burned as one of the risks. i am thankful that someone with deep knowledge like you can help me along the way in this cnc world which is new to me. i will be back in this thread when i am " already smart" with my DM542, as i want to utilize this board for minimal use and not throwing it away. maybe i will cut foam or mill pcb with it someday. i thank you for all the answers and infos, man

[texaspyro]

I run my mill and laser cutter off of some Compaq EVO laptops (WIN XP and Mach3). I bought 5 of the laptops off of Ebay for $125 total, shipped, loaded with legit OS's. Microsoft Office, and some other software. If something happens and I fry the laptop, OMG! I'm out $25. What most people consider to be obsolete trash is a VERY capable 2 GHz, 2GB computer. There is absolutely no need to buy/hook up an expensive computer and get it anywhere near a hunk of spinning iron.

That said, I started with one of these Chinese stillborns and quickly switched to a Gecko 540. I gave the Chinese board to a friend to play with and he been using it for years without any problems... it might help that he is rather deaf and hissing steppers don't bother him.

[aarggh]

Some laptops don't play nice with the parallel port, this is why Artsoft recommend never to use a laptop for Mach3.

Most if you play around with the BIOS settings will work fine.

cheers, Ian

[cncneeb]

[/QUOTE=aarggh;1749648]Some laptops don't play nice with the parallel port, this is why Artsoft recommend never to use a laptop for Mach3.

Most if you play around with the BIOS settings will work fine.

cheers, Ian[/QUOTE]

secondhand dualcore desktop will do anything just fine, i think. will buy one for sure. thanks for the info, aarggh.

and fortunately, i havent plugged anything to my vga port. thanks to your advice. it would be really dumb to burn vga port before doing anything cnc related.