Baby Steps

My Vexta motors and power supply arrived from MPJA yesterday. Tonight I connected all my electronics. Loaded up Mach3. Followed the EasyCNC Mach3 quick start and powered everything up and ........ nothing. Big flashing emergency stop light though. That seems like an indicator of something I should pay attention to. Googled mach3 e-stop flashing and found a mach3 tutorial. I read that I might need to set the e-stop to active low. Tried that and jogged the motors. Drum roll.....Movement. Woohoo! But wait. Why does the x motor only move one direction with the jog buttons pressed in opposite directions? Also why does the Y motor move when I jog the z axis and that only goes one direction? Went to the diagnostics screen and nothing jumped out at me but it seemed like some sort of pin mapping thing. I reread the EasyCNC Mach3 setup tutorial and noticed that my step pin # and direction pin # didn't match what he had. That might be it. Step and direction inputs for the axes must be mixed up. Tried it with the correct settings and woohoo! Everything is jogging the right direction with the right keys. I loaded a sample G code file and ran it. Lots of fun spinning motors dancing around.

Fun! Probably old news to the veterans out there but thought I would share.

 

Way to go Ben! It's still fun to hear about and you got some troubleshooting practice in too.

Tim

 

Ben, when you have your machine together and have successfully sacrificed a sheet of foam for your first cut part, you will be dancing and grinning and jumping and smiling just like all the rest of us did!
Congratulations on the first steps!

 

Thanks for all the kind words guys.

I may play with Mach3 some more and might give EMC2 a whirl.

Any ETA on the MK3? I want to sacrifice some foam. Can't wait.

 

I'm glad to hear it, Mark. Since yesterday I'm back on for my Sept. purchase projection. Sometimes things don't happen and sometimes all of a sudden they do.

 

Sounds great. Looking forward to seeing the MK3 pics when they are available.