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I have the AXBB-E board connected to Mach4, and I am trying to get the spindle forward and reverse working. I have a 24V and 5V dual output power supply that takes 120V AC input and outputs a +24V, DC common, and +5V output. I have the PS +24V commected to the AXBB-E +24V input, the +5V output of the PS connected to the AXBB-E +5V input, and the DC common output of the PS connected to both the 5V0 and 24V0 on the AXBB-E.

In Mach4, I have it configured to use O1 as Spindle FWD and O2 as Spindle Reverse. When I enable Spindle CW, I expect to see the LED for O1 to light up, but it does not. When I enable Spindle CCW in Mach4, I do see the O2 LED light up on the AXBB-E, but the voltage on that output is still zero, not the expected +24V.

I then reconfigured Mach4 to use O3 as the Spindle FWD, and I see the AXBB-E LED light up now for O3 when the Spindle CW is enabled in Mach4. Unfortunately, the voltage is still 0 on the output pin. I have tried to change the Mach4 config to turn on "Active Low" for those outputs, but that only seemed to change which LED on the AXBB-E outputs was lit. O2 would light up regardless of Spindle CW or Spindle CCW selection in Mach4.

Now the board does not have the 24V power indicator LED lighting up, even though there is +24V across the 24V input pins on the AXBB-E. Is it possible I have a faulty board? Should the isolated outputs normally be outputting 24V when active?

--Ben

Hello Ben,

First you should read the manual of the AXBB-E. By connecting 5V0 and 24V0 you skipped the isolation: you should use 2 separate power supplies. The O1..O8 outputs are NPN open collector outputs, so when they are on (the LED is lit) then they are connected to ground. The O1 output is controlled by a charge pump circuit, it won't work as a standard output.

Disconnect everything but the power supply and check all the cables.

I have a 5v power supply and a separate 12v power supply connected, nothing else, and the 12v power led does not turn on. I have verified the voltages at the input terminals.

Hey Ben,

I'm struggling to get some UCCNC support here on the CNCDrive support site, so I'm considering moving to Mach 4. Did you use the UCx00Setup.exe to get connectivity to Mach 4? Also (related) do you know if the Mach 4 software's "demo" mode allows hardware connectivity? Just don't want to buy something that won't work...

Disregard, I tested the UCx00Setup.exe and it does allow config of Mach 3 OR Mach 4. Am making this post so that others can find this information as well.

I was able to connect to Mach 4 without any issues. I used their installer. I'm new to Mach4 though, so I'm just poking around looking for the places to get things like pin selection set up.

I'm struggling to get some UCCNC support here on the CNCDrive support site

This is really a user forum.
If you need support, email info@cncdrive.com

Also (related) do you know if the Mach 4 software's "demo" mode allows hardware connectivity? Just don't want to buy something that won't work...

Yes, but it will only run for short time increments, like 5 minutes or so I think.