Only getting 1/5th the distance for axis travel.

cncbasher wrote:

also try reversing the logic of the step and direction lines

Ah, yes, good point. My setup worked far better when I inverted the step signals. (Inverting direction reverses the motors, and as those are effectively DC signals, you won't see any benefit from it)

You can invert the signals with the checkboxes in stepconf.

Glad you got it up and running.

John

afkool wrote:

I rigged the arduino to accept inputs and pass them out as 5v outs

I assume that isn't your long-term solution?

Can you tell us the manufacturer and model of your stepper drivers? I am pretty sure that your problem can be solved with a bit of re-wiring and/or some pull-up resistors.

I went back the the beginning of the thread, where you described the hardware.

The board has no opto-isolators, so I think you need to use the scheme in the attached pic.

At the moment you are relying on the p-port voltage to trigger the driver chips, which as you have seen is rather marginal.

In the second picture you are relying on the p-port current-sinking capability. Logic-low sinks 5v/1k = 5mA into the p-port pin, pulling the driver input pin close to 0V, and a logic-low is registered by the driver. Logic high puts the pin at (probably) 3.3V but with a high input resistance, so no current flows into the port pin and the driver pin sees a nice solid 5V.

I think you will find a handy 5V on the manual-control header.

I started off with a very similar board (but blew the drivers several times, and replaced with a more expensive option). I don't know if you have noticed but the manual control area is a 555 timer pulse generator connected to some headers. If you do look for 5V from there, make sure it isn't one of the pulse channels