[Ira]

Thanks roadstercycle,
It's good to know that some minds are working on the problem. I'm about a month or two away from setting up my CNC system. I have all the parts (so I think), but I'm still tunning/playing with my Patriot. I hope you get your answer soon, and I'll selfishly hope it gets fixed in the next couple of months I'll let you know if I find anything.

[ryanhathy]

Roadstercycle,
I don't have limit or home switches on my machine, it's small enough that nothing is hurt if it crashes. I have a PMDX-122 breakout board connected to the PCIe expresscard parallel port and pin 10 is setup for E-stop. Pin 10 is directly wired to ground and is setup in Mach 3 as active high. If I set it to active low, I am unable to reset Mach, that is how I know the input is working. For another test, I changed the E-stop setting to pin 11 which is the pin I would use if I had limit switches. This pin is not connected to anything. If I set it up in Mach as active high, I cannot reset Mach, but if I set it as active low I can. That's the opposite of pin 10 so I'm guessing this shows that both those input pins are working since one is grounded and one is not and they work opposite of each other. I'm not sure if this is a very good test, but hopefully it is helpful.

[mojojerry]

Hello ryanhathy I was just getting into cnc. I am a laptop adic and was wondering if what you have discovered about your new parallel expresscard since you have had a month with it? thanks jerry

[ryanhathy]

mojojerry,
I was just using my machine the other day. I was having some trouble with Mach 3, at first I thought it was a problem with the card, but I had just installed a newer version and hadn't had problems before. I installed Mach 2 and it worked fine, so I think it was a problem with Mach version 3.042.029. The problem was during jogging when accelerating, the speed would fluctuate oddly. Maybe it's a new way of dealing with backlash or something, but it made me nervous. I continued using Mach 2 without any trouble at all. Well, except my spindle motor speed control started going out, but that's an entirely different story.

[mojojerry]

Hello ryanhathy. Thanks! Would it be to much for you to discribe the major sub-componets of your cnc system. You could just e-mail me if you wish.

[ryanhathy]

mojojerry,
My CNC system is fairly simple. As I mentioned before, I am using a PMDX-122 breakout board which is connected to the parallel expresscard. I have four Gecko 203V drives connected to the breakout board, pins 2-9. I am using Keling stepper motors. My Mill is a X1 and I don't have any home or limit switches. Let me know if there is anything else you would like to know.