Help with Mesa 7i76e Setup for Closed Loop Stepper

PCW, you correctly identified the problem! Thank you! When I set this up, I just left all the default values since I just wanted to see a motor turn on my desk and didn't care how fast. I boosted the value to 5000 and it turns nicely now on command. I certainly need to revisit this and identify the correct settings once I actually install the motors on my machine.

JJ

Glad you got it sorted. Did you leave the wiring the way you had it?

rodw...Yes, I left the wiring the way I had it, which seems to be typical of closed-loop stepper drivers and does not follow the simple "match the labels" wiring that one would otherwise infer to use. That being said, I have not tried it using the latter method again to see if it would also work.

Cool, I think I was lucky with my stepper controllers (Longs motor DM542a) . Some people were horrified with how short my settings were after a bit of tuning:

I think I could shorten these a bit more which would allow increased velocities and accelerations but with a cheap NEMA 23 screaming at around 1300 rpm, I am quite happy

I have a 5th axis yet to wire in. I should try your method for shits and giggles on it.

rodw, I just tried the "match the labels" wiring method out of curiosity and low and behold, that also worked!

So, that begs the question of what is the "correct" wiring method? Surely there must be a correct way of wiring these drivers for proper/full performance. Does anybody have a good explanation for what is right or why it doesn't matter?

Thanks!
JJ

p.s. - this is so cool to see my three motors spinning in unison while it pretends to machine the LinuxCNC logo...a small victory!

The advantage of differential drive (using both + and - output and inputs) is that the step/dir signals have
greater immunity to crosstalk and noise coupled from nearby wires. This is more important with higher
performance drives with fast input circuitry

A small disadvantage is that the maximum drive current is slightly less since there are effectively 2 output
drivers in series in differential mode.