Test this axis

I just configured my system (stepper motors, Toshiba TB6560 driver) using the stepconf wizard. Everything went more or less smoothly and I now have an operating system.

The only nuisance is that the "test this axis" window does not work, meaning that it comes up regularly but no motion can be obtained, neither with the jog or the run buttons. On "cancel" it is clearly felt that current is cut to the stepper that moves maybe a step. The strange part is that everything runs normally in Axis. Any hint to this behaviour?

1- in Axis everything looks perfectly normal
2- yes all three motors are connected and they do what they are meant to, meaning that what I configured as x in stepconf is really x in axis and so on and no changes in wiring were ever made going from stepconf to axis and viceversa.

Still scratching my head.

Alas this is not the case: the only connections I have to the driver are:

emergency stop out on pin 1
dir and step for 3 axes on pins 2 to 7
spindle on on pin 8
unused on 9
home x,y,z on 10 to 12
emergency stop in on pin 13

Needless to say that I tried inverting the home and the emergency inputs with the only result of causing malfunctions in Axis.

The MC2 version is 2.4.5 and the system is Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, kernel 2.6.32 as it came on the live ISO CD and the subsequent updates.

Out of curiosity I tried exchanging step and dir before running "Test this axis" but it remained as dead as ever. I did not try this configuration on axis but after reverting to the correct one, concluding the remaining steps in stepconf it went on beautifully as always.

BTW I tried tonight the "calibration" button in the machine menu of axis and it did nothing. Although the documentation is not too clear it seems to imply that this refers to PID servos and not to steppers. Am I correct?

One of the next days I will hook a real scope to the parallel port outputs to see what is happening, then I will tell you. (BTW #2 - is there a way of launching halscope independently of axis? Every time I tried without an instance of axis open I got an error)

Thanks again for the help

Franco

Congratulations!

You hit the right spot. I was indeed the "emergency stop out". As soon as I negated it in stepconf test axis started working. Of course I had to set it back to the original status before saving the configuration, otherwise axis would not have worked: a bit confusing, but now at least everything is clear.

Thanks again for the support

Franco