[mrwolfe]

I know thia ia probably an old thread, but I thought I'd throw in my 2c

Hi all,

Has anybody successfully wired more than 4x axes to a cncdrive AXBB-E?
Ive got the first 4x axes (X,Y,Z,A) working perfectly off the non-isolated side of port 1 (pins 09-16) but am having trouble with expansion of B and C axes on the isolated side using pins 5,6,7 and 8.
I'm using Mach3 and have configured DIR/step pins correctly but feel it's a wiring issue rather than a software one.

A wiring diagram, photo or any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Even if you're using UCCNC, I'd love to see your wiring setups.

Thanks!

The short answer is that you CAN use the isolated outputs to drive steppers, and you DON'T need a separate breakout board, but it's more involved than wiring to the non-isolated outputs.

The non-isolated outputs and the isolated outputs work differently. With the non-isolated outputs, all the outputs have their commons connected to 5V0. You can use either the 5V0 on the power output pins or the 5V0 in the middle of the output section, they are both the same. The voltage on the pins of the non-isolated outputs will be either +5V or 0V, so you can connect a normal TTL type input to them and it will work. Or you could connect an output to the + side of a driver input and the - side of the driver input to 5V0 and it will work fine.

The isolated outputs are different. They are all referenced to 24V0, not 5V0, and they don't put out any voltage. The isolated outputs are more like a dry contact. To use them, you would need to connect the isolated output pin to the -VE input of the driver, and connect the +ve input of the driver to 24V+. NOTE, however, that if you do this, you will probably have to put a current limiting resistor in the +ve side of the driver input (or between the -ve input of the driver and the isolated output pin) because stepper drivers are often designed for 5V signals. If you don't put the current limiting resistor in, you can damage the driver input.


I have sketched up some options that you can use, I'll attach a PDF if I can figure out how.

[BigFellaPhil]

This looks promising, cheers for the info MrWolfe