[PJRU0304]

looks like the problem is in the stepper drivers because I have now replaced the parallel port card and I have replaced the breakout board and still nothing so I checked motor supplies and they are putting out steady 60V and on the output of the breakout board there is a steady 4.62 on both direction and step on all 4 motors but the output on the stepper drivers to the motors is like between 1.2 and 4.4 V and very messy, jumping all over the place. I am fairly sure the motors are ok because when I power up the control board I hear the bump and it sounds like always, so that's my educated guess on the motors, however if the motors are bad I guess I will find that out after fixing the driver problem.
Is it a normal thing for all 4 drivers to go bad in the middle of a tool change? That is what happened I think,
So far I have reinstalled mach3, replaced the breakout board, replaced the parallel port card. I guess I should have just got a new CNC (lol)
I would like to test the drivers but I am not sure how?
So I if they cant get fixed , does anyone have an idea on a better driver that would work with NEMA 34 stepper motors, that are going to last longer?
Is there any way to find what happened so it will not happen again, I'm not sure what I did but if it was me I would like to know how to avoid doing it again.
This whole CNC thing I love but it's only been built for about a year and I have already replace the 220V Inverter 2 times and the spindle 1 time, I have checked for shorts over and over and find nothing, all my wires were secured with shrink wrap ends and everything was soldered and taped. No bare wires anywhere? Voltage is clean and all on separate breakers in the house panel. My machine is in my woodshop, but I have a good dust collection and clean and dust every day
If I need to change my motors as well maybe some advise on a package that can drive a Heavy Duty CNC, at least NEMA 34 size motors because my gantry weighs around 75lbs with the spindle and water cooler on board the gantry. All that is on a separate circuit as well.
This CNC ran very well before the problems started, and it was very strong.

Thanks guys

Pat

[ger21]

If you jog back and forth, you should read 0V in one direction, and 5V in the other direction on the DIR pin.
You can't really measure the STEP voltage, but it should be close to 0V when it's not moving.

Are you sure you have the portts and pins assigned correctly? Sounds like a wiring or breakout board issue.

Is it a normal thing for all 4 drivers to go bad in the middle of a tool change?

It's not normal for any drives to fail at all, ever, but it does occasionally happen.

some advise on a package that can drive a Heavy Duty CNC, at least NEMA 34 size motors because my gantry weighs around 75lbs with the spindle and water cooler on board the gantry.

That's not heavy at all. Properly sized Nema 23 motors should have no trouble moving that.

[kenrbass]

If your motors (klunk) and lock in to where they can't be moved when powered up, your motors and drives are probably good. If you post what kind of board you bought and the wiring diagram with some pics of how you have it wired, it may help get the troubleshooting started. It could be as simple as sawdust in the estop switch.

[PJRU0304]

If your motors (klunk) and lock in to where they can't be moved when powered up, your motors and drives are probably good. If you post what kind of board you bought and the wiring diagram with some pics of how you have it wired, it may help get the troubleshooting started. It could be as simple as sawdust in the estop switch.

So after many hours trying to get this right, come to find 2 things...

1: after replacing the parallel port card the resource ID needed to be change changed in mach3 ports and pins . I guess I overlooked that.

2: the card did not seat correctly, I think the PC saw the new device only I don't think all the pins were set properly in the slot because when I pulled it out and pushed it back in it showed up as new hardware again? So I went through the setup on the card again and it worked fine after that

But it works now and thank you guy's for the help

Pat