Stepper motor current draw very low and torque very weak

Building new CNC and everything is configured with MACH3 and HY-DIV268N-5A drivers. The problem is very low torque on steppers where it starts skipping steps even with moderate resistance - it just seems too weak. I measured the current from the PSU to the driver and it reads 0.15 (idle) and 0.17 (jogging) when the driver is set up at at 2.5A. I switched out power supply, driver and motor one at a time to rule out any problem with each of these. Increasing current on the driver (with jumpers) increases the current only incrementally to 0.18 at 5A settings. I know the current to steppers is difficult to measure and there are different thoughts about measuring from PSU to driver vs. driver to motor but, irrespective of these, the reading from the PSU to the driver seems very low. The motor does not even get warm and this is why I am thinking that the current is very low.

PSUs used: 1) 48v 7.3A and 2) 24V 4.3A
Motor is 35V, 2.8 Amp bipolal Powermax II model P21NRXA-LNF-NS-00.
the multimeter is set at 10A settings.

Am I missing something? Is the current really .12A or it should be read as 1.2A when the multimeter is set at 10A? Again, the motor never gets worm and I am running it through the Mach3 interface.

thanks