Hi

I need help tuning my motors, I am running a dell p4 2.8ghz. Installing mach
went very well on a fresh install of win xp. The driver test had very small
spikes. my set up is running routout 10amp driver cards microstepping 3200
steps / rev. these are running 12nm (1700oz/in) motors. I am using a C11 BB
from cnc4pc. I've set mach to run at 45000khz and with a lead screw pitch of
5mm max speed is 4218 mm/m it runs nice at 4000 mm/m (157 in/m ) no problems
but sound rough at 400 rpm and 1400 mm/m which sometimes stall the motor's.
I then moved onto the x axis which has the same setup but has a 16mm lead
screw which ran happily at 12500 mm/m/m (492 in/m )but again sounded rough
around 500 (19in/m) and 1500 mm/m (59in/m) and if held at these speeds would
stall.

My driver cards needs a min of 1.0us on step
and the bb needs min of 3.0us

I altered the timing in incremental steps to 5.0us and 3.0u seems about the
best but the motors are still rough at the above feedrates.
The driver card asks to connect step and direction and also a terminal
return to pin 25 of the pc printer port. I have connected these to the c11
BB com and move the jumper so these are ground. Is this my problem? I have
not earthed anything in my control box as I am unsure of what to earth and
where to. I've uploaded a photo here

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2798/...f94a8505_o.jpg

I am very weak when it comes to electronics. I have one side of the BB
powered from the pc usb cable and the outputs side from a switched power
wall plug @5v 2amp. I tried switching this with a regulated wall plug but
made no difference. I did remove the terminal returns and this had a big difference, motors would only just move in one direction. I am using shielded
cable on all motors.

Also tried reducing driver amps from 6 down to 4 but this did not make any difference.

Any help or wisdom you can shed on this matter would be gratefully received.

Kind regards

Dale