DSP motors not turning

[powerfade]

Hi everyone.. So I am near completion of my laser table, but unfortunately I cannot get the motors to turn. My set up consists of 3 - 5 phase Vexta stepper drives, 2 of which are udk5114N and the other being a udx5128 drive. The motors are vexta 5 phase upk569auha motors. I am running the drives in single phase (1p) mode. Currently I have the drives connected to the DSP with the following connections:

CW +(driver) to pin 5(PWM+) DSP
CCW+(driver) to pin 2(DIR+) DSP
CW- and CCW- to pin 6(+5v)

My machine is fairly similar in nature to baccus61's machine and I have used his ini string to get me started.
When I power up the DSP it does the system reset, but no movement of the motors to home position. When I press the arrows on the control panel, all I get are beeps. When I press the arrows in the PHCad software, it is as though they are enabled, but cannot be pressed (i.e. the button does not turn a gray color background when depressed). I am kind of at a loss as I am not a "electronics expert" by any means. When I power up the drives the motors lock up as typical steppers motors do although the motor connected to the udx5128 drive seems a bit easier to turn than the motors connected to the udk5114n drives.

Any ideas would be greatly appreicated... Thanks everyone..

Chris

[twehr]

Hi everyone.. So I am near completion of my laser table, but unfortunately I cannot get the motors to turn. My set up consists of 3 - 5 phase Vexta stepper drives, 2 of which are udk5114N and the other being a udx5128 drive. The motors are vexta 5 phase upk569auha motors. I am running the drives in single phase (1p) mode. Currently I have the drives connected to the DSP with the following connections:

CW +(driver) to pin 5(PWM+) DSP
CCW+(driver) to pin 2(DIR+) DSP
CW- and CCW- to pin 6(+5v)

My machine is fairly similar in nature to baccus61's machine and I have used his ini string to get me started.
When I power up the DSP it does the system reset, but no movement of the motors to home position. When I press the arrows on the control panel, all I get are beeps. When I press the arrows in the PHCad software, it is as though they are enabled, but cannot be pressed (i.e. the button does not turn a gray color background when depressed). I am kind of at a loss as I am not a "electronics expert" by any means. When I power up the drives the motors lock up as typical steppers motors do although the motor connected to the udx5128 drive seems a bit easier to turn than the motors connected to the udk5114n drives.

Any ideas would be greatly appreicated... Thanks everyone..

Chris

When you turn the power on, do your motors "lock" so you cannot move them by hand? If not, then you do not have them wired correctly (meaning the wires from the motor to the drives).

[powerfade]

The motors do lock, however, if I "try" I can turn them by hand. I matched the motor wires colors to the drive wire colors for the udk5114n drives and actually rechecked them again this morning, but I guess I may have them wired incorrectly. What would be the best way to test which wire should go to which drive connection? My experience is mainly with servo motors and a little bit with non 5 phase steppers.

The wiring to from the drive to the DSP is correct then??

Thank you so much for getting back to me.

Chris

[twehr]

The motors do lock, however, if I "try" I can turn them by hand. I matched the motor wires colors to the drive wire colors for the udk5114n drives and actually rechecked them again this morning, but I guess I may have them wired incorrectly. What would be the best way to test which wire should go to which drive connection? My experience is mainly with servo motors and a little bit with non 5 phase steppers.

The wiring to from the drive to the DSP is correct then??

Thank you so much for getting back to me.

Chris

I don't have any experience with 5 phase motors. You should be able to find some reference materials through google.

Sorry..

[baccus61]

G'day Chris,
Check your wiring here on CNC zone and see if it's ok. Are your motor wires the same color as the legend on the Drive where they connect?

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/stepper_m ... iring.html

If the motors lock up then you are close so maybe it's just a software issue. If you can turn them easily then they maybe wired up wrong but if you try and drive them you will get a sort of magnetic squeal out of them and the motors will not turn very well. It all depends how many wires are wrong. (there are only a few hundred combinations you need to go through )

Can you do screen grabs of the parameter page set up in PHCad? ( I use "MWsnap" for my screen grabs and it's free)

Make sure your "run" and "stop" settings are correct on the Drivers (at the top of them). Set the run to full or about 3/4 and the stop at about 1/2.
Check if you have single or double pulse enabled on the Driver.
Check the connections from the DSP to the drives for Step and Direction so they aren't swapped around.

Also, make sure you have followed Tim's "minimum wiring connection" diagram for the DSP. Just look for it in the "Laser Discussion" section

Have you set up the PHCad software in Corel draw properly? or are you running it as stand alone?

If you can get some pics up here then we can have a good go at solving this problem. If we are armed with some good quality photos and a bit more info then we WILL get it all going for you so you can join in with the rest of us on one of the most amazing things you can do in the home shop
Just don't get too disgruntled as it might take a while to get to the bottom of it.
Rich.

[baccus61]

Here is some good info on 5 phase steppers you might need so you can get a better understanding of how they work. You don't need to know all the stuff so just absorb the relevant bits.

http://www.alltronics.com/mas_assets/acrobat/24M003.pdf

Rich.

[baccus61]

""The motors do lock, however, if I "try" I can turn them by hand. I matched the motor wires colors to the drive wire colors for the udk5114n drives and actually rechecked them again this morning, but I guess I may have them wired incorrectly.""

I didn't read this properly before. It may just be a software issue.
While the motors are at stand still the motor current will be reduced to what ever the "stop" setting is, so if it is set at about 1/2 way then the motors will only be getting 1/2 the amps at the holding torque so they will feel like they aren't very powerful. It's just the standby holding torque of the driver/motor and nothing to be worried about. The motor will only see the full power in it's "Run" mode.
Rich.

[powerfade]

Hi Rich.. As always thank you for all of the info. I wouldn't be almost done with this machine if it wasn't for you. I will go ahead and take a couple of snap shots of my parameters screen for you to take a look at. I double checked to make sure that all of the wires are correctly matched from the motor to the driver. I installed PHCad to work with Corel, but I currently just go straight into PHCad right now. I'll have to chech what I have the stop and run settings at, but I will put them to what you recommend. I currently have the connections from the driver to the DSP as follows:

CW +(driver/) to pin 5(PWM+) DSP
CCW+(driver) to pin 2(DIR+) DSP
CW- and CCW- to pin 6(+5v)

but I was looking at the driver documentation and started to think that maybe I have the them reversed??? Could that be the culprit?? The common should be +5v correct??

I'll try and get pictures tomorrow to post...

Thanks again Rich..
Chris

[powerfade]

I have attached screen shots of my parameters. Rich, I think it is basically the .ini file you uploaded.

Thanks..
Chris

[baccus61]

Hi Chris,
Thanks for the pics.
Just a couple of questions.

Have you got the "Emergency Stop" switch wired up and if so is the switch pushed in? I was caught by this little bugger once and was pulling my hair out until I reset it. Had a bit of egg on my face but was happy everything worked in the end

Have you got the limits sorted out.? I don't think it will have the sort of effect of not letting your motors turn but I found this to be the hardest part of setting up the DSP.
You need to cross check all the wires and make sure the polarity is the same for all the switches going into the DSP.
On the "limit lever" you have the High setting selected. This is for the laser to fire as well as the limits orientation and this means the DSP will want to see 5 volts when the limit switches are activated. Make sure the switches are wired up for this. If, say, your home is at the right hand bottom of your machine then you need to set your "home" to the RH bottom and also the "Machine" to the RH bottom. I think there are about 3 different places you need to set up for them. All very confusing sometimes.

Also check the table size of your machine in the settings as this can have a bearing on weather the motors will move. If the size isn't correct you will get and error on the HMI (Human Machine Interface or LED display) saying something like "Y spill error" or something like that.

Sorry for the late post. been having trouble with my laser tripping out on earth leakage and can't find the problem. Such is life.

Rich.

[baccus61]

One thing I just thought about, have you tried to run the drives with a LOW pulse instead of a HIGH pulse. Worth a try.
You will need to set up the laser for this as well but you can do this later very simply by swapping a couple of wires on the controller and DSP to use the LOW instead if HIGH pulse.
I have 2 different types of Drives on my plasma table and they use different pulses, high or low, to drive. Might work.
Just a thought.
Rich.

[baccus61]

Hey Chris.
Look here
viewtopic.php?f=55&t=660
and download the pdf for the DSP connection, the first one, and scroll down to the "Falling edge Pulse" connection on page 7/8. That is the one to use for the Drives.
The PU is the steps and the DIR is self explanatory.
You may be missing the "common" connection from one of your step or direction ports. They both need a common connection and a pulse connection from the DSP.
You can check with a DVM if the DIR is changing as it will go from 0 volts (or a small voltage like 1.3 etc. ) to 4.5 volts and above to change from Low to High

I get confused with the "Common" terminology because at work on the trucks I fix they have Common as the negative chassis connection but with all this CNC stuff the "Common" is the Positive DC side. Being slightly dyslexic also doesn't help things much either but I seem to make out ok with only a few parts having to be replaced through connecting them wrongly. I wish someone would standardise things oneday.
Rich.

[powerfade]

Hi Rich... So I finally got the motors moving today. I ended up putting the common on the pin #1 (the negative) for the x and y and it started moving right away. I am assuming this is the low pulse you were talking about. For whatever reason..It moved..Oh so exciting after banging my head for so long. I have dual motors on my x and they seem to run very smoothly so far anyways. However, the udx5128 combined with the upk569auha on the y axis seems to have some vibration. I wired it according to your post on the CNCZone and the link you sent me. The motor wire colors(upk569auha) and the the udx5128 drive legend colors are a little different, but the wire configuration you came up with worked the best out all of the combinations I tried. I was reading on the vexta site that the motor and drive may not be compatible because the newer motor I have is a pentagon design and the drive is older and may not support the new motor. I think the matching drive is the udx5128na (n stands for the new pentagon design apparently). Have you had any experience with that?? Thanks again Rich.. I can almost smell the smoke!!!

[baccus61]

Good on you!!!! Isn't it great to actually see something happen. Now you know how Dr Frankenstein felt. Mwwwaaahhhaaaaa!!!!

You can try any other motor with the 5128 but you need to remember the normal motors are only 1.4 amps so you will have to turn your "run" settings to 1/2 or below so you don't burn them out as the 5128 highspeed outputs 2.8 amps per phase. I would set it to about 1/4 just for a test then work my way up to near 1/2 and monitor the temp of the motor. If it gets hot really quickly then turn it off. Typically the motor will take about 5 minutes to get up to temperature and these things run at about 80 deg/C so if you touch it you will burn your hand. I usually set mine so that the motors are just a little too hot to touch but not scald myself on them.
All the motors I have used have just worked and worked well. I haven't had any vibrate yet but I have only used a limited amount of them, say 4 high speed ones in total and about 12 normal 1.4 amp ones.

The low/high pulse is different and is set in software.
If the computer sends PWM signals to the drive in HIGH the drive will interpret the signal from the computer as it rises. If you select LOW the drive will act on the PWM signal Falling or 180 deg apart. ( I think, but it might be the other way around )
The signal is sent as a square wave and the PWM varies the distance between the high and low parts of the wave and the frequency or how far they are spaced apart and the height of the wave.

I think you just wired up the drives so that the common and signals were correct. As I said earlier I do get confused with the terminology of computer stuff.

Welcome to the world of CNC...

Rich.

[powerfade]

Hey Rich.. I am stumped with the vibrating on the x axis motor. I am beginning to think it may be a bad drive. I tried a couple of different motors and the same thing. I am really at a loss... So frustrating... Ah such is life. I am not sure what could be causing it. I think I may try and pickup up a newer udx5128NA drive to run it. The torque seems good, but the and it seems to move okay, but a ton of vibration. If you have any other thoughts, I am all ears. I will look for a new drive too..

Thanks Rich....
Chris