[waynethewelder]

Hi everyone.

I’ve been on the ’How I fixed my Chinese TB6560 controller’ thread as I purchased a machine with this board in it. The board was toast so I fitted the newest version.

So I have a new problem now. Everything is plugged in, my Y and Z axis are moving great. My X axis is being weird. My X steppers are mostly running in opposite directions to each other. I say mostly because they occasionally run in the same direction. They also swap what direction they are going in, even when just pressing the same direction button over and over???

I have the TB6560AHQ board, running Mach3, have KL23H286-20-8B steppers Wired in series and powered by a 24v, 6.5amp transformer.

I know that in the future I need to wire the steppers in parallel and get a larger transformer but for the time being I just want to get my table running.

Any extra help would be much appreciated.

[routalot]

Have you tried switching the connections on one of them?It might mean they both run backwards initially in which case reverse the process on the one you changed and give the other motor the treatment.

[waynethewelder]

Have you tried switching the connections on one of them?It might mean they both run backwards initially in which case reverse the process on the one you changed and give the other motor the treatment.

I have not tried rewiring as of yet. This was a working machine at some point before I bought it so it should already be correctly wired.

That fact that they keep switching directions even though I’m
pressing the same key over and over is baffling me!

[waynethewelder]

Ok, I’m going to try something on Monday. Someone let me know if you think this will solve my issue.

The old TB6560 board I was using only had a max of 2.5amp per controller so the second X stepper is run through the C controller as X1. Now that I have the newer AHQ variant of the board, that puts out into 3.5amp per controller, I could wire my X1 stepper to the X controller and run them both through the one controller?

My motors are currently wired in serial so only require 1.6amp each. If I were to change the motors to parallel, like a few people have already told me I should, then I would need to move the X1 stepper back to the C controller. I just want my table to work right now before I try to make it run faster.

[ger21]

The only way they would randomly run in the wrong direction is due to the voltage on the direction pins.
Are you using the parallel port to drive these?
Measure the voltage on the direction pins at the drives, while moving in both directions, and see what the voltage is. The drives are likely looking for 0V in one direction, and 5V in the other.
Before testing, make sure there are no loose connections.

[waynethewelder]

The only way they would randomly run in the wrong direction is due to the voltage on the direction pins.
Are you using the parallel port to drive these?
Measure the voltage on the direction pins at the drives, while moving in both directions, and see what the voltage is. The drives are likely looking for 0V in one direction, and 5V in the other.
Before testing, make sure there are no loose connections.

The driver board is being run by the parallel port but the power is supplied by a 24v transformer.

I had checked many of the connections before starting out on this little adventure, including the X steppers and they still switch directions. There are a few of the connections that had oxidation on them which I tried to scratch away withy the top of my small screwdriver. I’ll take a little file to those and check the voltage, as you suggested, and go from there.

I would prefer to keep the X and X1 separate as I do plan on connecting the steppers in parallel once this is running as it should.

[waynethewelder]

The only way they would randomly run in the wrong direction is due to the voltage on the direction pins.
Are you using the parallel port to drive these?
Measure the voltage on the direction pins at the drives, while moving in both directions, and see what the voltage is. The drives are likely looking for 0V in one direction, and 5V in the other.
Before testing, make sure there are no loose connections.

I measured for voltage across the direction pins, which I’m assuming are the white/blue and white/green as the other two are red and black, and it doesn’t matter which way the stepper is turning, it’s reading 0.01v to 0v then goes back up to anywhere between 1v and 17v depending on where the stepper is resting in its rotation.

I went through and thoroughly cleaned all the connections, I used needle files and electrical contact cleaner. I’ve been playing with the settings and then putting it back to original when that didn’t work.

I’m completely baffled as to how this is happening!!!

[hfjbuis]

I measured for voltage across the direction pins, which I’m assuming are the white/blue and white/green as the other two are red and black, and it doesn’t matter which way the stepper is turning, it’s reading 0.01v to 0v then goes back up to anywhere between 1v and 17v depending on where the stepper is resting in its rotation.

The TB6560AHQ chip has TTL inputs for direction/step/enable. The maximum input voltage is 5 Volt.

If you use a TB6560 driver having optocoupler inputs, these optocoupler inputs are designed for 5Volt. To use them at 24Volt, an extra resistor is needed. When the voltage is to high, the optocoupler curent will be to high and de optocoupler may behave erratic and get defect.

[waynethewelder]

Thank you everyone for your help. I went through a lot of things and a lot of different posts. The main variable that kept coming up was that there must be a bad connection somewhere.

I had checked many of the connections on the machine but not all. So I just spent some quality time going over every single one.

I found a really corroded one on the X1 direction coupler at the motor and one on the same line at the anchor point below the board (see pics for setup). I had checked these for tightness before starting this whole thing but didn’t tug on the wires to be sure there was anything being clamped between the contacts. The wires were just resting against the clamp!

Now both my X steppers are moving in the same direction and changing direction only when I change direction on the jog buttons.

I’ve not been this excited and relieved in quite some time.

[waynethewelder]

Sorry. Forgot to add pics