OK! Got it sorted out. Mostly mistakes caused by my own mistakes. The motors are 7.7 Volts, not 5 as I stated. The instructions for the stepper driver clearly say to use a power supply 1 Volt higher than the motor's required voltage. I was running all motors from a 5 Volt supply. I whipped up a power supply from the junk boxen that puts out 8.9 Volts and should be good to ~5-6 Amps. Y-Axis is much happier now.
The X-Axis (which hasn't had problems at low feed rates) will be happier, too and will be able to use higher feed rates. Z-Axis (5 Volt motor) has always been happy and very fast. No changes there. The Y-Axis is hard to move by hand due to friction. All the linear bearings are in good shape but the X-Axis sits on the Y-Axis and there's just a lot of weight. Would a double-stack NEMA 23 motor help me here? The stepper driver can handle 3 Amps per motor. And I could add heavier (than TIP-120) transistors to it off-board. I'd forgotten many things about my DIY machine, having started on it in 2002 and working on it off and on since then. Fortunately, I saved all documentation that I generated and was able to refer back to changes I'd made. EMC is FANTASTIC! The stability, configurability and general "feel" is vastly superior to all the DOS and Windows (non-) solutions I've tried. Thanks to all who offered suggestions. It also prompted me to clean up my nasty wiring. Emory -- Emory Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://defoliants.googlepages.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;164216239;13503038;w?http://sf.net/marketplace _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
