CandCNC upgrade on top of existing MACH3/Sheetcam

[Capstone]

Hey everyone, I'm hoping this thread will help not only me, but others. Unlike a lot of folks on this forum, I couldn't afford to shell out thousands all in one pop on a Turn-key set-up for various reasons, mostly because this is just a hobby for me.

I had a previous attempt at a DIY 4x4 table fail using a set of 420oz stepper motors on what seemed to be a poorly designed gantry copied from a now defunct company which sold me just the motor mounts and I assembled the rest on my own. Way too many variables in the design, especially the gantry which was racking horribly and the stepper motors seemed to be chattering for other reasons like the motor driver cards or having other power issues, which were being driven by CAT5 cables and a TH5850(?) Motor Driver, so I threw the entire set up in the pile and got a CandCNC BladeRunner Dragon-Cut CNC Plasma Controller AIO kit with 620oz motors. The components I kept from the half finished attempt were the DELL OptiPlex 745 running Win7 with a serial port and printer port and an additional DB25 Printer card I added. The following is the email I just sent to Tom Caudle at CandCNC. I only say this because I want to remind folks that I am likely the cause for the following issue outlined in this email, but I wanted to give the community an opportunity to learn from my likely mistake. I'm sure Tom will be able to set me straight.

Tom, So I have finished up the motor mounts and am ready to ?bench test? my PC and the CandCNC kit for just the motors and have run into a snag.

I think I may have loaded too many of the MP3000 ?auto install? files combined with my existing MACH3 set-up and the parallel port/Printer port set up to make it unable to ?see? the motors and get them to Jog.

I had an existing MACH3 license with previous profiles, but I do get the CandCNC ?Plasma? profile for DTH II loaded and running.

I have a Dell Optiplex 745 running Win7
It has a native Serial Port and a DB25 Printer Port, but I also added a second DB25 card. All three ports appear in the device manager with no conflicts. I checked the HEX# for the Output settings in MACH3 it matches the native Printer Port so I cabled the AIO to the native ports. I left the 2nd card installed and active since I didn?t see any conflicts.

I didn?t change any of the PORT settings within MACH3 except to set the Y slave to A.

1. Started up the MACH3 with the CandCNC Plasma Profile running
2. All 4 motors are hooked up
3. Turned on the Master Pwr to the AIO
4. Pressed the green button on the face and the ?Motors Off? light went out
5. Reset the e-stop with MACH3.

I get nothing from the Jog commands to the motors. So I?m stuck. I either did something out of order or there?s an extra driver or possibly the second DB25 LPT1 card. I?m not sure.

What steps should I take to try and untangle or troubleshoot this.

[beefy]

The first thing I do is wipe the slate clean (format the hard drive).

The computer is being used as a machine controller. Take out any hardware not needed, like the printer card, and don't install anything else, i.e. Sheetcam. Use a separate computer for that.

Unless there's been any changes the Candcnc systems use XP although I have heard of an odd user using 7.

Read the Candcnc manual THOROUGHLY and make sure no steps are missed in your XP/Mach/Candcnc install and setup.

It would take me a lot longer to mess about with what you already have than to just format and fresh install everything.

The Optiplex 745 seems to be getting a few good reports for running Candcnc systems, nice and stable.

Keith.

[Capstone]

Thanks Keith.

Well Mr. Persistence, Trial Error and Mr. Fiddling are my best friends right now. They showed me how to get the Jog to work but for the life of me I?m not sure what they did. LOL.

I used the ?All in one? AUTO-INSTALL pack dated 10/23/13 from CandCNC's manuals page online and used the AIO profile. I removed all of the MACH3 software and reinstalled the 3.043.067 version. I removed the other parallel port on the device manager (not just disabled) and started fresh again.

It's a fairly clean machine software-wise and is definitely dedicated just to the cutting.
Btw, in case anyone thinks this was the problem, I have the 32-bit version of Win7, knowing that the 64-bit version would not work. It was a bear to find the Win7 32bit version.

So long story short, to this point, I?m up and running with shift-jog working nicely on all three Axis.

Now to get the DTHC stuff wired up and get my Plasma cutter wired. Wish me luck.