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Can I cable a GRBL Arduino to the parallel connector of my CNC controller?

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vtsteam:
I added a 9 V power supply for the arduino. Upshot of testing this afternoon: motors and gantry all work, but two of the stepper drivers are bad.  :doh:

Time to order new ones. Presently the system has a 24V power supply w/ 8.3 amp output. The drivers are set at 2.7 amps each, 8 microsteps on 200 steps/rev nominal. So I have to find drivers that fit those specs.

vtsteam:
Drivers ordered. Should be here Tuesday.

vtsteam:
Well, ironic possible end to this story (maybe not): NO the motor drivers were not bad.

The impetus for this GRBL project was the loss of the old Thinkpad600e laptop I used to run the CNC mill.

Since I last wrote here, I was able to get the software off of the old Thinkpad's hard drive, and image that onto the hard drive of a Thinkpad T43 laptop. And then to get that laptop's latency down via a kernel patch, to be able to run the old LinuxCNC version I had always run with this CNC mill. The T43 has a parallel port.

I therefore removed the GRBL Arduino, replaced the old parallel port breakout board that I had removed, connected up the Thinkpad, and......surprise, surprise, everything just worked! No problem with two of the drivers -- they all worked. And happily cut aluminum as commanded.

Soooooo.....something was obviously wrong with the whole GRBL scheme. I don't know why it was so flakey, and worked with only one axis. I'm wondering if it was a timing thing? Step and direction pulse width? I know you could adjust those in at least one of the CNC programs I tried. Maybe it was set too short? I don't know. I've never successfully been able to get an arduino w/GRBL going consistently.

By comparison, the LinuxCNC seems completely stable and usable.

I don't have a pressing need for the GRBL conversion now, but I get curious about this kind of stuff. I still wonder if the adapted cable would have worked, if indeed the only problem was a pulse width setting, and not the conversion itself?

Hard to let that go, even though I don't need to find out any more....

ps. I now have 4 additional brand new stepper drivers that I don't absolutely need.  :bang:

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