

- NO VOLTAGE FROM SPINDLE PLUG G540 SMOOTHSTEPPER DRIVERS
- NO VOLTAGE FROM SPINDLE PLUG G540 SMOOTHSTEPPER DRIVER
- NO VOLTAGE FROM SPINDLE PLUG G540 SMOOTHSTEPPER SOFTWARE
I do not have a good sense of what Mach3 does with the 'velocity' and 'acceleration' numbers in the spindle motor tuning dialog. After making this change, the spindle motor responded to commands as I wanted it to.Ĭuriously, when I used a parallel port instead of the Ethernet Smoothstepper, I do not remember having to change the velocity and acceleration values for the spindle to get the spindle to respond to commands. In my case, this resulted in the Velocity being set to "3735600" and the acceleration being set to "983040". speed and acceleration settings in the motor tuning dialog for the spindle motor I dragged the sliders for velocity and acceleration to their maximum value. I assume this due to the fact that parallel port controller boards do not appear to contain Clock Oscillators, and this is where the USB/Ethernet controller boards' performance enhancements are coming from.Įven after enabling PWM spindle mode in the Smoothstepper settings, my spindle motor remained stopped, apparently unresponsive to commands sent from Mach3.
NO VOLTAGE FROM SPINDLE PLUG G540 SMOOTHSTEPPER DRIVER
It appears, from looking at pictures, parallel port controller boards are only passing the PC generated parallel port pulses to the motor driver boards.

The thing I have noticed with all these USB/Ethernet options, UC100 included, is that they have Clock Oscillators on board, and so are (re)creating their own 'high quality' pulse streams directly from the Mach3 output. I certainly have no experience with this converter, but it might be worth a try, as it is not too expensive and plugs straight into the G540 for easy setup. There is also the UC100 USB to parallel port adapter which looks like it does the same thing as the SS, is easy to install, and uses Mach3. I have noticed that the Chinese have copied these USBCNC boards and sell them on eBay pointing you to Planet CNC to download his software.
NO VOLTAGE FROM SPINDLE PLUG G540 SMOOTHSTEPPER SOFTWARE
At a quick look, to a newbie, their software possibly looks a little 'simpler' to understand than Mach3, could be wrong though. I imagine they offer a similar performance enhancement to the SS boards, although they use their own controller proprietary software and not Mach3. Eugene mentioned to me a company, Planet CNC, that make the USBCNC (and Ethernet) controller boards.
NO VOLTAGE FROM SPINDLE PLUG G540 SMOOTHSTEPPER DRIVERS
It appears that in the G540 we have the finest motor drivers available, but that they are being driven by a less than perfect pulse stream generated by the parallel port. I am pretty sure that is what Eugene would be telling me anyway I am probably thinking too much about all this stuff at the moment though, and should really start to cut a few things first. I am glad to say that is what I hoped/expected to hear.
