First time EMC2 user need help

ok it appears that the configuration in your particular board may not be as per the instructions you posted ( ha we knew it was not going to be straight forward ! )

but first try inverting only pin 1 (EN ) as it could be working in reverse , although i doubt it ... , but the fact you can get the motors to go solid is a good sign .
and may be just that the timings are way out

looking at your hal file you appear to have high step and direction times , step times of 5000 ns & direction times of 20000 ns should be a happy starting point with these drives
so try altering the timings first , see attached files and in particular the step and direction timings

but if you feel the connections may be wrong here's a few more

here's another few pin combinations to try using stepconf
pin2 relay ( spindle on )
pin1 x dir
pin16 x step
pin7 y dir
pin14 y step
pin 6 z dir
pin3 z step
pin8 a dir
pin 9 a step

also here is another pin combination to try

pin1 x step
pin2 y enable
pin3 y direction
pin4 z direction
pin5 z step
pin6 z enable
pin 7 x direction
pin 8 y step
pin 14 x enable
pin16 relay ( spindle )

can you confirm that this is a 3 Axis board or is it a 4 or 5 Axis ,

Hi!

It is a 3 axis board. I have already tried inverting pin1 and nothing happened. I will be trying your configurations.

tks again for helping us

Hi! again,

Being a newb I will ask a newb question...............I am unsure what you mean by look at the files. I am looking at them but looking and knowing waht to do are two things:(

May I ask for a bit more info on what you want me to do other than try the pin out changes?

tks

yes of course , my mistake ...it is easy to forget the new user ,,,, ask all the questions it is the way to learn ...

ok here we go ..
open your hal file in gedit ( i find gedit is the easyiest to use graphics wise ) but any preference you have is fine

find in the file the following
setp stepgen.0.steplen 1
setp stepgen.0.stepspace 1
setp stepgen.0.dirhold 215000
setp stepgen.0.dirsetup 215000

there is a section for each axis , axis are classed as 0 through 3 ( or higher) and usualy relate to x y z etc )
as you can see your dirhold is set to 215000 which is a long period time

try changing and edit the above to
setp stepgen.0.steplen 1
setp stepgen.0.stepspace 0
setp stepgen.0.dirhold 35000
setp stepgen.0.dirsetup 35000

all parameters are set in editable txt files for ease ( at least the ones you can touch )
in fact most people once the get to grips with linuxcnc do not use the wizards at all , and hand edit a configuration

the configurations are basicly split into to files you have found i.e hal and ini

hope this helps , also search the wiki , and the online documentations can help too ..

see how you get on ...

Dave

Good day again,

So I have tried everything and still no change but we have been testing each pin coming out of the parallel port and here is what we found with a DMM on volts:

Pin 1: 5v
Pin 2: nothing (0.04V)
Pin 3: nothing (0.04V)
Pin 4: 5v
pin 5, 6, 7, 8, 9: nothing (0.04V)
Pin 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16: 5v
Pin 17: nothing (0.04V)
Pin 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25: Ground

Is this weird? Is my parallel card on drugs?

This is always this way whether I change pin set up in EMC2. The card is speaking to the TB6560 board during flash up since you can hear the relay activate but I believe part of the problem is what I described.

Ideas?

tks

andypugh wrote:

gmaranda wrote:

Pin 1: 5v
Pin 2: nothing (0.04V)
Pin 3: nothing (0.04V)
Pin 4: 5v
pin 5, 6, 7, 8, 9: nothing (0.04V)
Pin 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16: 5v
Pin 17: nothing (0.04V)
Pin 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25: Ground
Is this weird?

It's not very wierd. 1 to 9 are outputs, and will be low. Except for pin 1, which is inverted.
Pins 10 to 17 are Inputs, and will be pulled high internally.
So, only pins 4 and 17 are doing anything unusual.

Are you absolutely sure you have the right IO port address for the parallel port?

What does cat /proc/ioports say?

I will check the ports again but we did it a few times so I am pretty sure that is what they are.

Being new to linux do you mind expanding on cat/proc/ioports? And how do I get to them and what do I look for?

tks again

andypugh wrote:

gmaranda wrote:

Being new to linux do you mind expanding on cat/proc/ioports?

Open a terminal and type "cat /proc/ioports"

If you read the list you ought to see the parallel port, and its base address.
This is rather like "lspci" but it finds ports that are not on the PCI bus too.

Will do tks.

Now that I think of it is there something that needs to be specified in CMOS? I did not have a parallel port card in the computer so I had to install one which led me to be believe that I may need to adjust something......

tks