[Oskar_E]

Hi!

I recently bought a 3 axis kit for my homebuilt CNC mill/router. The kit includes a bob, DB25-1205, 3x DM542A stepper drivers and nema 23 425oz-in stepper motors. The stepper motors are powered by a 36V, 10A, 350 watt power supply. The kit brand is longs motor.

I´ve been trying to get some movement from my motors for 8 hours straight, gone trough all the tutorials and videos i´ve found on youtube of similar setups but i just don´t seem to get any movement from the motors while jogging in Mach 3.

What i´ve been doing so far is setting up mach 3 as in the tutorial, got the right parallel port and such set up. I think i´m on the right track as far as to the drivers, since my parallel port monitor shows the right pins engaging while i jog various axes on mach 3.
In the picture below i´ve illustrated my wirings, and they should be done the way others on youtube videos have done them but apparently i´ve done something wrong since the motors won´t move.

The green LED on the driver is on, so thats should be right at least.
I´ve measured the voltages on pins 2 and 3 on the bob/driver and the PUL- changes between 0 and 5 voltages as i jog in mach 3. The DIR seems to be the same voltage all the time.
The stepper motor clearly has holding torque and gets pretty warm when i keep it on for a while.

So the signal seems to be getting as far as to the stepper driver, the motors seem to have power and holding torque, and the stepper motor windings are wired according to the manufacturers specs. I tested coils by shorting them by hand and turning-> resistance just to be sure before i connected them. Signal isn´t getting to the motors trough the driver or then the signal is wrong... i´m out of ideas.

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/attach...&stc=1&thumb=1
I´d appreciate some help on this matter, would be just my luck to get 3 faulty stepper drivers in one order, since none of them seem to behave differently to the other, I tried changing parts all kinds of ways but no luck with that either.

-Oskar

[James Newton]

Shouldn't you contact the people who sold you the drivers for help? My guess would be that ENB- needs to be grounded, but I only support the drivers I sell, so I don't really know with that one.

[Oskar_E]

Hello and thanks for your input, and yes i have contacted the supplier for schematics, but i have yet to recieve any.

I did however find out that my laptop, a dell workhorse that i was trying to use for my mill, seems to perform horribly in the mach 3 signal tester program. It was running at 6000 Hz when it was supposed to be doing 25kHz, so that might be the reason that nothing works. So i ordered a new mobo with a parallel port and the necessairy stuff to get it working. I'll get back with the results as soon as i get it in for testing.

/Oskar

[A_Camera]

Hello and thanks for your input, and yes i have contacted the supplier for schematics, but i have yet to recieve any.

I did however find out that my laptop, a dell workhorse that i was trying to use for my mill, seems to perform horribly in the mach 3 signal tester program. It was running at 6000 Hz when it was supposed to be doing 25kHz, so that might be the reason that nothing works. So i ordered a new mobo with a parallel port and the necessairy stuff to get it working. I'll get back with the results as soon as i get it in for testing.

/Oskar

Like James said... connect Enable - to GND.

Even if your PC is slow the motors should run. I don't know the specs of your PC but Mach3 is not that demanding, it runs also on pretty poor performing PCs, especially if you just want to test it. Remember though that Windows 7 32bit is the last one supporting parallel port, so if you run W7 64bit or anything newer than you can forget about Mach3 with parallel port.

I include the manual of DM542, in case you are interested.

[roker]

port selection in mach3