OK I can't find the problem gremlin and it's driving me crazy...

Hello Everyone!

I would appreciate some guidance here...

I purchased a 3 axis HobbyCNC EZ Rev0 Chopper driver board and soldered it together. Tested voltage as per instructions and its correct.

Power supply is a Meanwell NES 350-24v with 14.6 amps output

I am trying to run 3 Powermax II P22NRXG-LNN-NS-00 stepper motors

My computer is a Windows 7 machine and did not come with a parallel port, so I purchased a PCI-E 1284 DB25PIN card and installed it. I also purchased a cable and tested it for continuity with my multimeter, the pins are indeed straight-through (some posts suggested weird wiring inside the cable could cause issues)

I have the 8 wire motors wired up as:
B - blue
b - orange
COM - 2 black wired into one COM terminal
COM - other 2 black wired into other COM terminal
a - red
A - yellow

Using Mach 3 I have the Ports & Pins setup as:
X axis pins 2, 3
Y axis pins 4,5
Z axis pins 6,7

Everything else I can see is set to Pin 1.

I plug this baby in, turn it on and I cannot seem to get anything to happen. No noises, no nothing.
What simple but painfully obvious step have I missed here?
I appreciate your help!

Hi Dakk


with the power on are the motors locked in position ?

if the reference voltage on pin 13 is over 2v or none of the mode jumpers are fitted the stepper driver IC goes into sleep mode

a while ago I tried a printer port adaptor in a PC but I could not get it to work
from what I understand not all IC's used in the adaptor cards work with Mach 3

you could try building this tester from Geckodrive.com :-

Attachment 262582

It could make it easier to prove the HobbyCNC board is working

without a logic probe it can be difficult to test the step pulses from the printer port
you will not se them with a multimeter


John

Is the address of the card correct and the same in M3?

since the mother board had no on board port I set the adaptor to 0378 hex ( mach3 default address)

Dakk

Mach3 does not support a Parallel Port in windows 7 64bit, you will need a UC100,or a Smooth Stepper Etc to use Mach3 with windows 7, I have seen others have the same problem using windows 7 with trying to use a Parallel Port

32bit can work with a Parallel port but if you have 64bit it is not going to work

Have you checked the output from the Parallel port