I want touse the spindle relay to start my VFD. The VFD is connected to a PDMX-122 board. When used with a smoothstepper and mach3 the relay turns on the spindle ok.
how do I get M4 and the 422 to turn on the relay
Two things to check:
(1) Look in the "Macros" subdirectory of your Mach4 profile directory and delete all files that start with "M3", "M4" and "M5". If you are using the PMDX sample profile and the default Mach4 Hobby install directory, that would be:
C:Mach4HobbyProfilesPMDX-SampleMacros
The files are named:
M3.mcc, M3.mcs, M4.mcc, M4.mcs, M5.mcc and M5.mcs
These are macro files that are supposed to implement the respective M-code commands but they do not work. Deleting them allows Mach4's default handling of these M-codes which works just fine.
These macro files are installed as part of the profiles provided by Mach4Hobby (i.e. "Mach4Mill"), and were mistakenly included in the original releases of the sample profile provided with the PMDX-SmartBOB plug-in.
(2) Just to be complete - Go into the Configure->Mach dialog and click on the "Output Signals" tab, then scroll down to the end and you will see three spindle-related entries:
Spindle On
Spindle Fwd
Spindle Rev
If you want the relay to energize whenever the spindle is running (regardless of direction, via "M3" or "M4"), then assign "Spindle On" to device "SmartBOBUSB", Output Name "Pin1", with a red "X" in the "Active Low" column and a green check mark in the "Mapping Enabled" column.
If you only want the relay energized when the spindle is running reversed (via "M4"), then assign "Spindle Rev" to pin 1 as above. Likewise for energized only when running forward (via "M3"), use "Spindle Fwd".
Bob
