Hi Ian, The signal lines are FAR more sensitive to noise than the stepper lines. It is virtually impossible to pick up enough noise on the motor lines to affect the motor. I don't think your Z axis problem was directly related to pickup on the motor wires. It is possible that there was some noise picked up and it was re-radiated in your control cabinet.
I always try to keep the signal lines as short as possible, especially in noisy environments. Les Ian W. Wright wrote: > HI, > > I'm in the process of building a second little mill - this > time a stepper-driven gantry type and I'm wondering what the > pros and cons might be of different driver locations. On the > first mill I had all the controls in a big box under the > bench with heavy wires going to each motor but I'm wondering > now whether any advantage might be gained in this project by > positioning the driver cards adjacent to each motor. This > would shorten the cables carrying power to the motor but > would mean carrying signal cables from the parallel port > around the machine together with DC power wires to each > card. One reason for considering this is that, on my > previous machine, I had a problem with the Z-axis stepper > picking up interference from brushed spindle motors and so I > had to change to a 'universal' AC motor drive for the > spindle which was heavy and limited in speed. I tried > various methods of screening the Z-axis motor leads and put > ferrite beads over them but nothing seemed to work. As I'd > like to use a high speed spindle based on a DC motor on this > mill, I wondered if it might be easier to shield the > 'signal-in' wires rather than the power wires to the motor. > Any thoughts? > > Ian > _________________ > Ian W. Wright > Sheffield UK > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry® Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9-12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconf _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users