Messages

1

Parallel Port breakout boards, motherboards, and dedicated accessories / Re: PMDX-126 & UC400ETH Compatibility

« on: September 19, 2016, 04:48:13 PM »

I'm curious about how this is working with the UCCNC  software?

Works great! UCCNC easily allows you to import your Mach3 XML file, so getting it up and running is easy. Right now I'm working on getting macros and plugins integrated in it that are similar to the Mach3 2010 Screenset that I am used to using.

2

Parallel Port breakout boards, motherboards, and dedicated accessories / Re: PMDX-126 & UC400ETH Compatibility

« on: July 06, 2016, 01:08:24 PM »

So the UC400ETH is essentially a drop in replacement for the ESS?

If so that is great news.

From the limited testing I've done, pretty much. I only had time to jog the machine around a bit and make sure the spindle still worked, but everything went smoothly. Once I've made some actual cuts in Mach3 and UCCNC I'll report back.

The only thing that prevents me from calling it a true drop in replacement is that the UC400ETH runs off of 12V DC, while the ESS runs off of 5V DC. So the PMDX-126 can't power it over pin 26 of the ribbon cable like on an ESS. Not an issue for me as I had a 12V DC power supply close to where I installed the UC400ETH in my system, but something to think about for others.

3

Parallel Port breakout boards, motherboards, and dedicated accessories / Re: PMDX-126 & UC400ETH Compatibility

« on: July 05, 2016, 08:56:31 AM »

I got my UC400ETH installed, and it works very nicely with the PMDX-126 and other hardware in my system. Installation was very easy, and I didn't have to do any reconfiguring of things other than deleting the Ethernet SmoothStepper plugin, and installing the UC400ETH plugin. Mach3 works exactly as it did before, and I'm going to be putting UCCNC through its paces soon.

4

Parallel Port breakout boards, motherboards, and dedicated accessories / Re: PMDX-126 & UC400ETH Compatibility

« on: June 21, 2016, 10:27:09 AM »

Balazs at CNCDrive responded to my email this morning with the following information:

"The UC400ETH has fixed outputs and inputs pinouts as listed in the product manual.
The pinout is standard LPT port compatible, in other words the pinout is the same as the pinout of a standard LPT port.
If you plug an IDC26 to DSUB25 female crimped cable assy into the I/O ports of the UC400ETH then you get the same pinout connection as a standard LPT port.

The pins of the UC400ETH are electrically also compatible with LPT ports, all of the output pins are with TTL buffer driver 74HC14. (5Volts, 20mA sink/source max.)
And all of the input pins are also TTL (5V) compatible with weak pullups to the internal 5V.

And all the Input type functions are configurable to any input type pins in the UCCNC and all the output type functions are configurable to any of the output pins,
in other words all I/Os are freely assignable to any functions of the UCCNC.
The same is with the Mach3 plugin, all I/Os are freely configurable to the Mach3 functions."

So I guess it should work just fine with the PMDX-126. I'll get one ordered and report back on how it works out.

-Kevin

5

Parallel Port breakout boards, motherboards, and dedicated accessories / Re: PMDX-126 & UC400ETH Compatibility

« on: June 21, 2016, 07:39:40 AM »

Steve,

Thanks for the quick response. I'll contact CNCDrive and see if the UC400ETH will meet the requirements that you posted here. Once I find something out I'll respond here to let the rest of the community know.

Thanks again!

-Kevin

6

Parallel Port breakout boards, motherboards, and dedicated accessories / PMDX-126 & UC400ETH Compatibility

« on: June 20, 2016, 01:48:14 PM »

Hi there,

I'm currently running Mach3, but am interested in trying out the UCCNC software to run my CNC router. I currently have a PMDX-126, PMDX-134 w/ Gecko G203V drives, a PMDX-107 spindle controller card, and an Ethernet SmoothStepper.

UCCNC requires use of one of their motion controllers to interface with the software. I'm interested in the UC400ETH, as the computer running my CNC is more modern and is running 64bit software, so it has no parallel port driver. Currently I'm using the Ethernet SmoothStepper, but would like to swap it out for the UC400ETH as it is compatible with UCCNC as well as Mach3, just in case.

Would this board be an easy swap with the Ethernet SmoothStepper I have connected to my PMDX-126? From reading the documentation it looks like the pinouts for the 26pin connectors are the same between the Ethernet SmoothStepper and UC400ETH. I'm just curious how things will interface on the PMDX side of things. Here's a link to a thread on CNC Zone where a user mentions having to make custom crossover cables to get things to work correctly:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/uccnc-control-software/309482-software.html

Here's a link to the UC400ETH documentation:

http://cncdrive.com/MC/UC400ETH%20datasheet/UC400ETH_manual.pdf

And here's a link to the Ethernet SmoothStepper documentation:

http://warp9td.com/index.php/documentation/doc-ess#Mechanical

Any help or guidance is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

-Kevin