Are you using a meter or a scope?
A meter. I just bought it. Klein tools
I was hoping to avoid having to buy a scope
This is a little frustrating.
@George_Allen why don’t you want a scope? Scopes are geek Gold Cards. If you want to see the signal bouncing around on a multimeter you’re going to have to use a really slow step rate. Meters usually only update a few times a second. If your meter has a frequency scale that might work. That will be good to kilo or maybe even megahertz. Another thing you can try is hooking an LED and a 330 Ohm resistor up to your step line. But again to see the LED flash you’d have to step slowly. You also have to hook LEDs up the right way around to get them to light up. Your drive optocoupler has an LED in it that your control signal flashes.
Me, I’d rather use a scope.
One last thing about stepper motor drives. To work them you have to satisfy their timings. That means the pulses you send them have to be the right length, or longer. There’s a minimum setup time for the signal. I know in LinuxCNC that is configured in the software. I don’t know how Mach 3 works but I imagine it has a similar setting. If your control pulses are too short your drives will just ignore them.
@Paul_Frederick I just bought the scope. I thought I’d have to wait 2 months for it to arrive. Apparently it ships from the United States
@George_Allen welcome to the land of the electronically sighted. What kind of a scope did you get? I need a LC meter now myself. Inductance has always troubled me. I’m hoping an LC meter will shed some light on the topic for me though. One trouble with technology is that the more complicated it gets the more stuff one needs to deal with it. So it is a vicious cycle. The more you get into it the more you have to get into it.
I got the one you suggested. I can’t afford the others
Im having a Homer Simpson moment. I think my problem is related to having mounted the ESS to a piece of sheet metal. I asked the tech if using a piece of sheet metal as a mounting plate would cause ground loops, and she said yes, that would cause a lot of electrical noise and interference. I removed the mounting plate and im still getting poor voltage ratings on my BOB. i’m afraid I’ve blown ANOTHER costly controller. I can stand replacing the BOB, but I really don’t want to buy another controller.
Well, I think the ESS is okay; but i still can’t get motors to budge.
@George_Allen You got the kit? If you put that scope together right it’ll impress you. I have the whole suite of cheap kit test gear. Function generators, AVR transistor testers, the little scope. Every now and again I really love building a kit. It is very zen.
I wrote an article about how I build kits using my any idiot method of assembly.
Well, I’m still trying to figure out/troubleshoot Mach. Nothing seems to work. Trying to figure out active low vs active high circuits.
@George_Allen active low means a low ground level triggers or turns on. Active high means the high side of the signal activates whatever. In your case whatever is your optocouplers on your motor drives. Which you have them hooked up to +5V right? That means they’re going to turn on with a low ground signal applied. So you’d be considered active low. Because positive positive ain’t gonna light up anything. But positive negative will. Your +5V is the positive. So you need a low signal on your control line to fire the optocoupler. But if you have one side of your optocouplers tied to ground then just reverse everything I said and you’re active high. Then the high of the square wave would trigger your optocouplers. You need a voltage potential difference for anything electrical to happen. Between a low and a high. So whatever you’re giving your optocouplers you’re active the opposite of that. If they’re grounded then you’re active high, if you’re +5V you’re active low. Logic is so illogical.