Smoothstepper?

[Michael Arruda]

Hey all,

I am finally back up and running with my CNC at home after closing my shop down almost 2 years ago. Everything was working fine before, but now I am having a problem with the G540 not receiving a charge pump signal so I have turned that function off. It worked OK for a couple small cuts, but now I think I am getting stray voltage into the controller or something from the computer- it's getting jittery and losing steps at times.

I was thinking about picking up a Smoothstepper board to aleviate this issue, as it seems to be a parallel port problem. Also, the cable causes drop outs and freezing on the computer if it get's wiggled on the computer side- i'm wondering if the parallel port on the motherboard got knocked while in moving or storage and there could be a nearly broken solder joint or something. Other than a change of venue, everything else is the same on the whole set up.

So, anyone with a smoothstepper that started out with the on board parallel port? See any significant differences?

Another benefit would be the flexibility to run with a laptop instead of the old desktop if I so chose.

-Michael

[Michael Arruda]

If anyone is interested, I think I found the problem. I disconnected my UPS and went with a standard surge suppressor and things seem to be communicating better now. Looks like the UPS was failing and letting off some RF interference or something. I'm hoping that took care of the issue.

-Michael

[Mike Heidrick]

Keep us posted. I just use a surge suppressor myself. My router uses a g540 and the parallel port.

If I ever go smoothstepper I am going the ethernet variation.