Slave Problem....HELP!

Hello,
I am new to cnc and I recently purchased a workbee 1500x1500 setup from bulkman3d...after painstakingly setting it up and building the framing and wiring all the electronics I finally was carving some small projects....but not for long because my digital dream UC300 controller died...I got a new one and began my setup process again with the plugin file and port and pins settings (I deleted my old mach3 profile during troubleshooting the problem before I found out my uc300 was bad)

Now I have my setup all running and all my axis are working ACCEPT FOR THE SLAVE A TO Y. I have tried everything. I switched the motor to another pin on the controller to be sure my motor was good and the motor driver was tested also... all my hardware works fins so IT MUST BE A SOFTWARE ISSUE. I have the slave axis set to A, my motor tuning settings are correct and under general config I have the home slave with master setting selected....I have searched the web for solutions and can not find any reason why my A axis is not moving.

Are there settings that have to do with the slave of A to Y that I am unaware of? Has anyone had this problem?

If one Y motor jogs I would prove the other motor and wiring works by swapping connectors at the driver. Then try to get the A channel to work on The Y axis. Prove the path from controller to motors works then carefully review settings in Mach 3 to get the software set.


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Hi Dean448, yes I connected my A wires to the Y connector on the control board and ruled out all wire or motor issues. The A wires and motor work just fine when plugged into any other axis on the board. As for mach3 I carefully reviewed all settings, my cnc came with a video to setup settings and the first time I setup everything worked just fine. Im starting to think I have a faulty control board where its not sending signal to the slave axis pins. I even tried to setup my A axis on the B and C axis because my controller has all 3. It seems that no slaving works for me....I think I can only order a new controller to rule out a controller issue.

I wonder if there is any other free software like mach3 that I could use to test if it works with?

Mach4 is completely different. In the end it’s another license. Uccnc has software but it’s designed to work with their controllers. LinuxCNC is all open source but it requires a different operating system.
Normally once you get some of the axises to move, the software should easily get them all to work unless you have hardware issues.


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So. Basically the controller is an updated NVEM?.
Say no more.

Get a 'proper' controller.

Can you recommend a good controller?

Hi,

Quote:

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I wonder if there is any other free software like mach3 that I could use to test if it works with?

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Mach3 is NOT free, what this means is NVEM have supplied (yet another) pirate copy of Mach3 and that is why you'll get no help from the Mach Forum.

Even were you to consider buying a Mach3 licence ($175) I'd would not bother.....all development of Mach3 ceased seven years ago, whatever bugs it has, and there are plenty, its stuck with.
Mach4 on the other hand ($200 licence) is up to the minute and is light years ahead in my opinion, I've been using it for seven years. Mach4 all but requires an external motion controller,
I use the well known and respected Ethernet SmoothStepper ($180) by Warp9TD, but there are other manufacturers (6) that make Mach4 ready boards.

Notably all those same manufacturers boards also have Mach3 plugins, so you can use Mach3 if you insist.

One of the manufacturers, CNCDrive, whom make a number of controllers including the UC100 (don't get ripped by the Chinese fake UC100s on Ebay and Amazon), UC300, and UC400
will work with Mach (3 or 4) OR their own UCCNC software. The UCCNC software licence is only $60 but REQUIRES that you use one of their proprietary controllers. The result however
is a software and motion solution that is much better than Mach3 and as good, and competitive with Mach4.

LinuxCNC is an open source CNC software that runs on a realtime Linux distro on a regular PC. It can be configured to use a venerable old parallel port as motion controller and is on a cost
basis very compelling....ie its costs NOTHING! Most LinuxCNC users choose one of the Mesa controllers, like a parallel port on steroids, at a cost of $200-$400 roughly. LinuxCNC is very good
in itself and if you a programmer very VERY flexible indeed.

Another solution is Centroid Acorn. I can't say that I am familiar with it, but reports are that as a moderate cost (approx $400) commercial solution it is easy to set up and use and has many
of the usual CNC features. It is not as flexible as LinuxCNC or Mach4, or even UCCNC come to that, but for a simple, no frills, straight forward installation is good value for money.

Two other names crop up, usually with good reports, Rosetta and PlanetCNC, I'm totally unfamiliar with them, you'll have to do your own research on those.

Craig

Quote:

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Originally Posted by joeavaerage

Hi,
One of the manufacturers, CNCDrive, whom make a number of controllers including the UC100 (don't get ripped by the Chinese fake UC100s on Ebay and Amazon), UC300, and UC400
will work with Mach (3 or 4) OR their own UCCNC software. The UCCNC software licence is only $60 but REQUIRES that you use one of their proprietary controllers. The result however
is a software and motion solution that is much better than Mach3 and as good, and competitive with Mach4.

Another solution is Centroid Acorn. I can't say that I am familiar with it, but reports are that as a moderate cost (approx $400) commercial solution it is easy to set up and use and has many
of the usual CNC features. It is not as flexible as LinuxCNC or Mach4, or even UCCNC come to that, but for a simple, no frills, straight forward installation is good value for money.
Craig

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I've finally managed to get around to trying out my new UC300eth and UCCNC.
Had the board running with Mach3 earlier too.
Plenty happy with it.

I reckon for basic 3axis + slave, spindle, limits and a bunch of relays usage a good way to go is the UC400eth. With a decent bob for the axis on port 1 and a generic bob for the rest on port 2. Get the uccnc license with it and it's cost is on a par overall.

If you need more I/O then level up with either Smooothstepper or UC300eth.
There is a Pokeys board but I wasn't convinced over the support or forum.

If I did iit again I'd go straight to cncroom for the UC300eth-MAX system. (UC300, UB1, UD1, UCcnc lic).

Next level you're getting to Acorn and things.

Hi,
there is a subtle difference in licencing between UCCNC and Mach.

With Mach3 if you have a licence you can use it as often as you like on as many machines as you like.

With Mach4Hobby, you may have up to five activated copies of Mach4, and as many Demo copies as you want. So you could have as many as five different machines.
Each licence is specific to the MAC of the PC on which it is installed. You manage your own licences on-line on the NFS website. You may for instance release the licence
of the old PC that just blew up and licence a new PC to replace it. You are allowed up to seven such transactions in two years.

With Mach4 Industrial you may have only one active copy/machine per licence.

UCCNC allows one copy per licence only. Thus if you had three machines each with their own UC300 say, then you would need three licences. Given that UCCNC is cheaper
for most hobbyists whom seldom have more than two machines then UCCNC is still somewhat cheaper than Mach4.

The subtle differences in licencing between UCCNC and Mach4 mean that there is very little to choose between them.

More importantly than licencing is the feature set offered by each solution. I believe Mach4 has a slight edge in lathe, plasma and laser functionality.....but each manufacturer progresses their
software independently so whom is ahead at any given time is a moving target.

Mach4 does have a very strong suite of tools and scripting language that allows for a great deal of customisation to a particular need, and exceeds the same abilities of UCCNC. Having said that
most hobbyists are perfectly happy with either Mach4 or UCCNC 'out of the box' and don't require any customisation, thus for many Mach4's advantages in this regard are moot.

Craig