Novamill next step issues

[minimad30]

As with every other Denford machine I have bought the nextstep card isn’t playing ball!

I just got a brand new novamill from a school and I can’t wait to get it going, unfortunately I can’t get the card to communicate with vr5 or 2….

The Green Led card boots up and when powered on sits at the number 2

It doesn’t budge from this, I tried a spare card which sort of works and it will jog the machine about thinking it’s a microrouter compact. (This card gives me an issue where there is a delay to jog commands).

Can anyone tell me what 2 means on the led display?

I know everything else in the cabinet Is working fine as my spare board has proved, the issue must be either the card or the settings when communicating with the pc.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I don’t want to have to change another machine to Mach3 after getting the Denford software.

Thanks!

[Martin]

Are you trying to connect via USB or RS232?

If it's USB make sure you can see the card in device manager & the driver is installed.

If it's RS232 make sure you have the correct RS232 serial lead connected. (Can you supply a photo of the lead).

Have you tried running EasyUpgrader which can be found on the VRMilling CD?

[minimad30]

Connecting via RS232.

Its the original denford cable which came with the machine. Are there any differences between the cable for the Novamill and the Microrouter Compact? I know the cable i have works with a compact next step green led card.

Easy Upgrader cant find any of the next step cards i have, quite odd considering one of them does work well enough to jog the machine. Cant find any of them with mint man either.

[Martin]

The Novamill & the Microrouter Compact use the same RS232 cable. It may be worth loading Workbench & seeing if that can detect the NextStep board. It may be missing its Firmware. Workbench is on the VRMilling CD in the utilitys directory.