PDMX410 compatibility with aQuickCNC 3-axis unipolar controller

[owlogic]

Does anyone have advice about whether the controller <http://www.aquickcnc.com/store/3-axis-unipolar-cnc-controller/> will play nice with the PDMX410/Mach4?  Sherline mill 5400.

[Bob at PMDX]

Yes.  The pin-out on that board's 26-pin ribbon connector looks to be compatible with the SmartBOB-USB family of products.  If you start from our sample Mach4 profile that can (optionally) be installed with our plug-in, you will have to make a couple of changes to the configuration:

(1) Our sample profile has the EStop input assigned to "Pin10" by default.  You should change this to "Pin15" to match the documentation for this motor driver board.  As an aside, the online documentation for this board says that pin 15 is the E-Stop input, but I'm not sure that board itself does anything with the EStop other than pass it on to the parallel port connector.  It says you can use normally open or normally closed switches on the EStop input.  But there is no jumper or DIP switch on the board (that I can see) to select the EStop polarity.  That is why I don't the board does anything with EStop.  If that is indeed the case, you could connect your actual EStop circuit to any of the input pins, with pin 10 being the standard default for our sample config and all of the PMDX product line.

(2) Our sample profile has the "Charge pump" output signal assigned to "Pin17".  Your board does not have a charge pump facility, so disable that output signal in Mach4 (it is not needed).

(3) Likewise, out sample profile has the "Spindle On" output signal assigned to "Pin1".  Pin 1 on this board goes to a solder point (not easily usable).  So you should probably disable that output signal as well.

Bob

[owlogic]

Thanks, will try and report back.

[owlogic]

It does work!  The initial experience was frustrated by a by a bad driver chip on the board.  The chip is an SLA7078, and the on-chip current sense resistors were open, burnt out.    It was probably something we did while building it or setting it up, but the other two axes seem to be working fine.  The first test with Mach4 was a limit switch, which worked fine, then the Y axis, which happened to be bad, then the X axis, okay.  We'll exercise it more today, and we have a replacement chip on order.

[Bob at PMDX]

It does work!

Always words we like to hear :-)  Glad to hear it.

Bob