[SwampDonkey]

Is there any way to connect the two? My machine operates in a fairly noisy environment and Ive heard the E smoothstepper helps with this. Ive been losing steps like crazy and its driving me nuts. Its a series 1 with the old school control. Has anyone done the same?

[TurboStep]

I'm starting to test the Ethernet SS on my Series II but I'm not really far enough to draw any conclusions. I'd been considering it for quite a while but was waiting for the documentation go get beyond draft v0.1. I still don't think it has progressed yet. This is a pretty bad sign but I decided to take the plunge anyway. After a few minor hiccups I did manage to get it running. It's actually quite easy. There is still one point I want check out before running the first job - maybe I'll get to it this evening but certainly by the weekend.
I don't have a noisy environment but I have other reasons for using it - more on that later.
Is anyone else using it?
Step

[ger21]

My machine operates in a fairly noisy environment and Ive heard the E smoothstepper helps with this.

I really don't think an ESS will help with noise issues at all. The ESS basically emulates the parallel ports. Your noise issues are most likely after the parallel port, which would make them after the ESS.

The USB SS had noise issues that caused the USB connection to frequently get dropped. The ESS doesn't suffer from that type of noise issues, but I don't think there's anything to reduce noise in the rest of the system.
I've never used one, though, and I could be wrong.

[TurboStep]

Your noise issues are most likely after the parallel port, which would make them after the ESS.

How on earth do you know this??? How do you define where the noise issues "are"?
The reason that the ESS is (reportedly) less sensitive to noise is due to the electrical isolation provided by the Ethernet connections. This will indeed help in many cases but its impossible to make any kind of blanket statement without analyzing the environment in question or testing the solution.
Back to the facts...
i have no obvious noise problems but when the computer I ran without incident for about 2 years simply died I dug out my replacement. I was confident that this machine would work just as well as the original because the were identical - unfortunately I managed to destroy it immediately Then the search began and I quickly realised that I had just been lucky with the first PC. Some PCs didn't work at all well. I therefore decided to search for a solution that was basically independent of the computer hardware in order to protect my investment. The smoothstepper appeared to be device that I could just "plug-in" between the controller and the mill so I decided to give it a try.
As I mentioned earlier, the documentation for the ESS just isn't finished. The latest (and only) version is still revision 0.1, rough draft from April 3, 2013 and part of the installation refers to a document on the soigeneris home page. I get the impression that they aren't really interested in selling these devices. Putting together these two documents, additional information from the USB Manual and playing around a bit, it turned out to be quite straight forward to get running.
First tests were however disappointing. When jogging with the outer ring on the Shuttle the axes didn't stop moving! Obviously I played around with the jogging settings first but without success. I spent 2 evenings analyzing xml configuration files to find that this can actually be solved by simply selecting continuous jogging - I've no idea how I missed that! Being restricted to the continuous setting is problem for me because I've never used these settings anyway.
The next step was cutting air. Everything appeared to be running fine but I had the impression that the machine was just a little sluggish. I timed a simple 2 minute long drilling routine to find that it took 15% longer when running ESS compared to direct control via the parallel port, even though the control computer and the settings were exactly the same. I haven't been able to correct or explain this yet, but I still have a few settings to investigate, and obviously a faster computer is a possible candidate to compensate for the difference. Has anyone else experienced this?
The good news, for me at least, is that a computer that wasn't previously capable of running the mill satisfactorily over the parallel port had no obvious problems when used together with the ESS.
I'm not yet fully convinced about the ESS but I still think it's worth continuing with the tests.
Step

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Is there any way to connect the two? My machine operates in a fairly noisy environment and Ive heard the E smoothstepper helps with this. Ive been losing steps like crazy and its driving me nuts. Its a series 1 with the old school control. Has anyone done the same?

If you are "losing steps like crazy", it is exceedingly unlikely a SmoothStepper will be of any help. There is nothing about a SmoothStepper that makes is any more or less immune to noise than the parallel port. The improvement some people have seen in switching to the Ethernet SmoothStepper is as compared to the USB version, as the USB interface has proven problematic on some machines, and the PC and SmoothStepper will randomly cease communicating with each other. I was one of the "early adopters" of the SmoothStepper, back in 2009, and I spent years helping both Brian Barker ("Mr. Mach3") and Greg Cary ("Mr. SmoothStepper") develop and debug both the USB and Ethernet SmoothSteppers on several different machines, so I know what I'm talking about.

Adding a SmoothStepper is highly unlikely to solve your problem, and will simply introduce many new variables. Your problem is almost certainly electrical (bad connection, faulty component, etc.), or, more likely, software on the PC. Have you run the Mach3 driver test, to see what kind of jitter you're getting? Are you running a Tormach PC, or your own? If Tormach, what modifications have you made/what software have you installed on it? If your own, what OS are you running? Whave you done the optimization to get rid of all the unnecessary cr@p that can cause problems for Mach3? What kind of graphics controller do you have? If it's on-board, that is very likely your problem.

At the very modest step rates the Tormach runs at, the PP should work just fine, unless you've modified the hardware or software and created a problem.

Regards,
Ray L.

[daniellyall]

the easiest way to check for noise is to sit a fm radio on the machine when its off have it tuned in to a nice and clear radio station if it goes wonky when you turn the machine on you have noise