[ger21]

Motors should still run fine at close to 180°. 120° is not that hot for steppers.

[CarveOne]

Get one if the low cost laser thermometers to check the temperatures with. Takes all the guessing out of it. If you add a small fan to the motors you can see how much the temperature drops when they are running.

[Metalbender]

Guys…
I got a HF thermometer and found out my drives after 2 ½ hrs of running were about 85deg. Good! Then the gremlins showed up and blew the motherboard in the ‘puter in the middle of a cycle. &%^#$ Then the new circus was getting a Startech PCI card to work with Mach 3. After my wanderings in the “darkness” another individual sent me link to the MACH 3 forums and a thread explaining that with a PCI parallel port card MACH 3 likes to use LPT3. ????! So I entered the DC9F address in M3 and ZOOM! Were off and running. It’s a good thing I don’t drink heavily. What was I working on?? Oh that’s right a hot Z motor. After reading Louie’s post, I checked my driver settings and found I had my Z set at 1/16 micro stepping OOPS! Changed it to ¼ stepping and WALLA…what a difference! Ran almost 9 hrs today to get caught up. Motors were all about 110 deg…Life is Good!

Thanks again to all of you for your help.

Greg

[Metalbender]

Hi All. Been away for way to long. As I said in an earlier post, aluminum rails don't last and actually steel angle iron rails aren't that much better. Finally went to the ground "V" rails. the axis' roll nice and smooth. I also went with the Smooth stepper last year...parallel ports are dinosaurs!?
It's been three years since I posted last (wow time flies) and I have had that C-11 MUTIFUNCTION breakout board die on me three times. It's always the same problem...it's always the input from the limit switches.
Can anyone recommend a better board? At about $150 a pop this is getting ridiculous. I even tried baking them in an oven @ 200 degrees thinking maybe it was moisture. Nope...put a new board in and it's off and running.
Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Greg

[LouF]

Nice to see you back I took a vacation as well been back for a little over a month.
I use G540 4-Axis Digital Step Drive on my machine don't know if you could use this.
http://www.geckodrive.com/geckodrive...ives/g540.html

Lou

[ger21]

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