[skyguynca]

I hooked up everything by the manuals, I set my direction in configuration software Mach3, turned on spindle controls.....

Nothing moves though. Oh I am setting up a lathe. According to the tunning software for the DG4S the encoder and all is working and communicating.
I have blinking green lights on both smoothstepper and on the DG4S, but nothing moves.

In pins and ports on Mach3 I set the spindle step to pin 1 port 1 and direction to pin 2 port 1, turned on spindle control in Mach3

Help please it is driving me crazy

[springlakecnc]

hi, when you power up, is your motor on and holding? I.E. when you try to turn the motor shaft by hand, does it fight you and want to stay where it is? If your motor is not on and holding, your power wiring to the motor is messed up, or all the adjustment pots on your servo amps are turned all the way down. If it is on and holding, that means your wiring for the servo is good, and now your ready to do battle with the control circuit. I think you have a "smooth step" board, and a breakout board. I know there are WAY many set up parameters in Mach3, so, what I would do is, for now, forget the Smooth Step board, and only use the breakout board. Get out your old windows 98 computer, because it will run a "DOS" program, download Yeager cnc pro software (its suppose to be free and there are yahoo groups about it) which is a super simple basic program with a fraction of the set up screens, as Mach3 has, and start by running your servo's with that. Once you have motion, than deal with Mach3 and smooth stepper. I am a machine builder, and I have owned both Mach2 (&Mach3), and cnc pro for maybe 15? years, and to this day, I program with Mastercam, download to cnc pro, no smooth stepper board, just a breakout board, and I cut my parts. Maybe if your doing a lot of contouring, you may need a smooth stepper, but I don't. This is just a suggestion and I hope it helps you, good luck. PS: If this is your first build, make sure your parallel plug wire from your computer is shielded, and your encoder wires, or you will lose position. I shield all my wires outside of the electrical box, (except the power cord) and I can run for hours with my position right on the money.

[skyguynca]

OK, UPDATE.....I got it moving, seems that the 5V signal from the C25 was not getting enough power from the smoothstepper board so I went with a higher mA walwart transformer, good to go, I can trigger movement now. However now in the servoconfiguration software when I hit the analyize button so I can see what the current PID settings do, the servo turns the lathe head 180 degrees and them reverses 180 degrees, then repeats it. It is very smooth but I need it to go in one direction.

Any Ideas?

DC Perm Mag 3.2 hp motor
DG4S
AMT-102V encoder
SS with C25 board.

[skyguynca]

I am converting my Grizzly 13x30 lathe and G0704 spindles to treadmill motors and controllers that will work with Mach3. I fianlly got it all working and here is the scoop.

Spindle components:

p/n 314571 treadmill motor 2.8 hp 130vdc intermittent 2.6 hp 110vdc constant duty 1940 watts 18 amps.
Amt102-v encoder
DG4s Driver

My problem getting this all to work was very simple, in the programming PID with the servo configuration software there is a setting they say never to touch unless you have no choice. Well I am sure with the factory servo motors with high mass and inertia that is probably true. With the treadmill motor it is not.

Anyway when first hooked up and turned on it growled loudly. I adjusted AP to 1 its lowest setting to make the system stable, no change.
I then AD lower, and lower till I got around 100 and the growling lessened a lot. Lower setting did not help so left it at 100
Lowered the AI, as it got lower and lower the growling turned into movement, When I got round 10 it was swinging 180, I should say oscillating back and forth 180 degrees per step.

I tried everything, no effect. I asked the manufacture, Arturo at CNC4PC where I bought the electronics and he had never seen it before. I search every forum to no avail.

Then I decided to change out all the components to see if it made a difference, no it did not.

Finally I decided to change one setting that the instructions say you should leave at max if at all possible. Well the setting was the Li setting and it was 65535. I dropped it 100 at a time, no effect. So then I set it down to 10….surprise the servo finally spun, huge error in position but it spun.

I adjusted the LI up and up while the errors decreased, then used the tuning instructions that came with the DG4S and 10 minutes later I had a spindle on my lathe that worked perfectly with a very small error showing up due to the mass of the drive system and now I will also move those settings to my Mill that is using the same motor, encoder and driver.

My hat is off to Hoss, Arturo @ CNC4PC.com, Al the man (helped with powersupply design) and John_100 (also powersupply design)
IT ALL WORKS GREAT !!!!!