Been working on and off on my mill for several months now as time and money allows.
It started as a Tri-Onics Handyman mill, stepper drive, Variable head. linear scales, ballscrews. Old Tri-onics controller was shoot. Good addition to my shop.
Replaced boards with PMDX 302 breakout board and Gecko drivers, very good products. Also had to rebuild variable speed head (shim, wore shaft). I kept power supply, steppers and linear scales.
So far I have steppers running with Mach 3 (free download for now). Tested movement with 1,2,3 block clamped to table, zeroed indicator, ran a loop program, moved 6" square both dirrections. Kept "0", was very suprised for the age of the mill.
Here is where im at know, I want to hook up linear scales to give me a Digital readout when I want to run in as a manual (yes I want run it as a manual). I have already looked up about close looping Mach 3. I need info on hooking up the linear scales.
+5 Vdc, A, B and common.
Do I need a board in between scales and computer LPT2 (I already installed extra parllel part)? Or can I hook them up to the parelllel directly????????