I tested the X and Z stepper motors for my lathe individually on the bench and they worked fine. That was about a month ago. I now have everything wired up in the machine, but I'm unable to make them go. To simplify things, I disconnected the X motor and am just testing the Z, but both exhibit the same behavior. I have things set up like this:
The Stepper drivers are StepperOnline CL57Y. I have them set to 1600 steps/rev, and have the wizard configured to match that.
Acorn H2:
- ST1: Z Step (wired to driver PU-)
ST2: Z Direction (wired to driver DR-)
ST3: Z Enable (wired to driver MF-)
- IN1: Z Home Switch (wired to mechanical Z home switch, NC)
IN3: Z Driver Alarm (wired to driver ALM-)
I have the Z Home, X Home, Z Alarm, and X Alarm all wired to their own inputs, because I have space to do that and I'd rather have the granularity of knowing which one is triggered, for testing. The home switches work as expected, confirmed in PLC diagnostic window.
I have traced all wires (encoder and motor) from the motor and verified that they're in the correct positions on the driver. I get no Alarms on the driver (the driver has an alarm LED and tells you what any issue is via a blink pattern. but it's not on at all, thus no driver-level errors).
The driver DIP settings have an alarm polarity option (OFF is NO, ON is NC). I have tried both settings.
-When I hit the home button with the Alarm polarity in the OFF/NO position, CNC12 aborts homing with a driver alarm error, which makes sense.
-When I hit the home button with the Alarm polarity in the ON/NC position, CNC12 thinks the motor is spinning (DRO is updating), but there is no motion. PLC Diagnostics show this input as red though, even though it appears to work.
It's also probably worth noting that on the Acorn, the LEDs next to EN1 and EN2 are lit green by default. When it tried to home they go red (disabling the motor?). I unchecked the checkbox in the advanced setting to invert the enable signal, and Enable comes up red by default now and switches to green when it tries to home, but the motor still doesn't spin.
So there are two things I'm confused about here:
1) Why is the PLC diagnostic window showing the Alarm state as red, regardless of whether the driver is set to NO or NC output? It seems that when the driver is set to NC, Acorn thinks there's no alarm, but it's still showing as being an open circuit (red) in the PLC Diagnostic window.
2)What might cause the motors to not spin, even if Acorn is indicating that the motor is enabled, and the DRO is behaving like the motor is moving? Yes, the driver has power, and yes, everything is connected and wired as it's supposed to be.
