First Time Builder - Stuck

Like most of the stepper drivers of that class the drivers are enabled by leaving the enable disconnected, disabling the drives is done by an active signal and enabled by an inactive signal. Kind of counter intuitive.

I know and hate it. Me will never let it unconnected.
But as i understood him he can turn his motors.....

I’m wondering if it would be worth disconnecting the drivers from the Mesa card and hooking up a 555 running at 5v just to test the drivers themselves.
It would be highly unlucky for all 4 to be FUBAR but at least it would rule that issue out. Also a continuity check on the stepper motors wouldn’t hurt.

The recent comments on this thread has prompted me to rethink my wiring and setup and I've found a few issues which get my machine up and running. You can view the first movement of the X-axis here:

There were a couple issues I had to contend with. First, I had followed an incorrect wiring diagram for the Mesa 7i96 card which likely led to my second issue which was the break out board I was using for a serial interface between the microstepper and the motor had been fried in some initial testing. Couldn't get anything to move with that one after that happened.

I rewired everything and replaced the fried serial interface and successfully got things moving again. I also decided to document the wiring, just in case I had a lapse in judgement and disconnected anything. You can see that here:


Just want to reiterate how much I appreciate how helpful everyone on this forum seems to be!

cmorley wrote: Why were you 'modifying' the HAL for gantry motors? Pncconf should be able to get basic dual motor gantry to run. Pncconf calls them tandem axis...

If that facility is broken I would like to know so it can be fixed.
I don't want to derail your process here but am curious.

Chris

Thank you. I tried the Tandem axle with my Mint 19.2 and LinuxCNC 2.8 but it did not work. I read in another post about modifying the hal and ini. I took a sec to create a basic config with a tandem Y2 and it worked!! I was able to jog all 4 motors and the 2 Y motors turned at the same time!

Mike_Eitel wrote: I know and hate it. Me will never let it unconnected.
But as i understood him he can turn his motors.....

Thanks for the help. I do not believe that I could turn them by hand once the system was turned on. All are working now.