Re: 6 steppers

[Jon Elson <jmelson-at-artsci.wustl.edu>]

Till Franitza wrote:

> Hi!
> I am trying to drive 6 Steppers with the EMC.
> 4 work an 2 donīt.
> I suppose this is because the pins for stepper 4 and 5 (5th and 6th) are
> electrically different from the others. I read they are open collector LS TTL.
> When trying to measure the voltage of pin 1, that is suposed to carry dir
> signal of motor 4, i received nothing at all.
> Has anyone 6 Steppers connected to EMC? How did you connect the last 2 of
> them? Do I need a driver that makes the signal stronger? I want to interface
> to an ericsson stepper motor Driver. This works fine with the first 4 Motors.

Unless you have the reverse kinematics modules reconfigred for your
configuration, you will only get about this far, I think.  What I'm saying
is the problem might be the software doesn't pass all the channels.
If you are using a revers kinematics written for a hexapod-type machine,
then it should work.

If the problem is that the outputs are open collector, then you will need a
resistor to pull the signals up to +5 Volts.  Try a 1 K Ohm resistor.  You
can get +5 Volts from a floppy drive power cable on a desktop system,
or from a game port connector.

Jon