Solid State Relay (SSR) for switching Router under control of Mach3

[dakmonf]

Brad;

Again thanks. I will go give it a try right now. I will post if I encounter any difficulties but that seems straight forward.

Greg

[dakmonf]

All seems well except I am not sure how to turn on the router using Mach. I am able to manually turn "on" the contactor and the router responds but I am unable to get it to respond via Mach. I am going to diagnostics and trying spindle toggle yet this may not be the correct method to test.
I believe that I have the ports & pins set up correctly with Output 1 enabled at port 1 pin 17.

Greg

[bradm]

I'm pretty sure the PMDX manual said that the relay (and the LED) are on pin1 (Strobe). Not on pin 17.

[dakmonf]

Brad;

I tried pin 1 as well, but still no response. I will re-check the wiring later today.

Thanks

Greg

[bradm]

Okay, so the PMDX docs seem to indicate there's an LED on the PMDX for pin 1. If the LED is toggling, and not the router, then look for a wiring problem. If the LED is not toggling, you have a software config issue.

[dakmonf]

Unfortunately nothing I have tried has worked. I have wired as you suggested Brad yet I cannot get the relay to energize.
In the PMDX manual it states;

"In order to energize the relay, a "0" must be written to the parallel port control register"

I have searched on how to do this but I am very confused by the literature. Can anyone please guide me in the right direction.

Thanks as always.

Greg

[bradm]

Greg, is the LED on the PMDX toggling on and off, or not? We need to know whether to help with the wiring, or with the software config. If it's the wiring, maybe post a picture. If it's the software config, maybe post a screen shot of the pin configuration page.

[dakmonf]

Brad; No, it is not toggling. The output 1 light in Mach 3 does toggle, but not the light on the board. I will post pics asap.

Greg

[bradm]

Okay, so it's a software problem. Check out page 10 of this guide; it appears that you need to both set up the spindle to output 1 on the spindle setup page, and map output 1 to pin 1 on the output signals page.

[dakmonf]

Brad here are my settings.

[bradm]

That all looks right to me. I think you need to call tech support at PMDX and get them to walk you through to the point that the LED on the board toggles on and off.

[dakmonf]

Thanks for all the help Brad. I will call on Mon.

Greg

[casi]

Are there any other alternative that replaces the SSR

[gmessler]

Hi Guys, It's been a while.

During my build I had trouble getting my SSR going so I just wired 5v directly to it and used my safety switch near the router to turn on/off the router.

I thought I'd re-visit the problem. I'm starting to think the problem is with the BOB not the SSR. I have the SMD LED on J8 port 14 of the BOB toggling on/off with the spindle toggle button but don't get 5v out only 2v which isn't enough to trigger the SSR.

Also the LED on pin 17 is lit and I don't know why.

[digit]

If you disconnect SSR from BOB, do you still get 2V or you now have 5V ?

[gmessler]

Actually I only measured it with the SSR disconnected. I did connect it to the SSR but the 2v wasn't enough to turn it on.

[gmessler]

Well, after working with this for a while I decided to give PMDX a call.
As it turns out because I have a regulated 5v out (from my Antek) it should be feeding the 122 NOT to the GND and Pwr Alt in terminals but the GND and the +5 Aux OUT terminal. It does sound counter intuitive but everything works great now!!

[baseball43v3r]

I was wondering if anyone had an updated post on doing this? Gerald's original called for a pmdx-122, and I know most are using a pmdx 126 (as am I). I was hoping someone could give direction on what pins and ports they used physically as well as in mach 3/4.