stepper and hot end wiring

So it seems that evey time I get something to work, something else fails. Unlike what appears to be the norm or black blue red and green wires, my stepper motors came with green red yellow and gray. I cannot get a sound or a wiggle or anything out of them when connect the way they should be. The chart I was given says:
green- phase a,
gray- phase a return,
red- phase b,
yellow- phase b return

I have a sanguinololu board which only labels the pins as 1a 1b 2a 2b.

Also, my hot end won't heat up or it's taking a ridiculously long while to do so. I've been working on this for 20 days straight almost and everything has been going fine up until this point. I bought the hot end preassembled and the only information about the build that the seller would give me is to just "trace the wires" when i had asked which group corresponded to what part but the problem there is that both groups come from the same hole and to do so I would have to dismantle most of my mendel. How long should the hot end take to heat up?

Is it the wiring in general? I'm using 24 awg copper wire that I use on robotics projects.

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I would try the A's on the steppers to the 1's on the sanguinolo and the returns on the steppers to the B's on the sanguinolo

so like this

Stepper Controller
A 1A
A Return 1B
B 2A
B Return 2B

Power it up and check that you have resistance on the motor, should be hard to turn by hand when its getting 12V, relatively easy when not.

Im a relative noob but had similar issues with different steppers and controller

GaZ

I had tried that and still nothing. I'm starting to wonder if it might just be that the motors are bad. But then what about my heating issue? Hmm.

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The hot-end should warm up in ~10 minutes or less, from what I've seen on my buddys' machine (mine is still in build).

Step 1) Check the wiring to the hot-end at the board end of the wiring for continuity, by first removing one or both leads (both would be better)
It should show a small resistance but test valid with a multimeter set to continuity (the setting that beeeeeeeeeeeps when you short across two leads with resistance lower than ~200-300 ohms). I think the hotend nichrome or power resistor should have resistance far lower than that (for instance, my j-head power resistor is 5.6ohm), so a continuity check should validate the wiring and heater as a group.
If it fails, then you have a wiring issue or a bad heater element and will need to trace back from the connector/screw terminals to your hot-end to find the break.

Step 2) Presuming that checks out, verify you have power for the hot-end going into the boardm, and that the FET is switching on and displays low resistance while on.
For the rev 1.3a board (that's the only one I found easily on the net for reference)
JP8 pins 1&2 are +12VDC. Measure using your multimeter between each of those pins and the 12V in return/common (what you may call "ground")
JP8 pins 3&4 are the return from the heater to the board, which run back thru an N-channel FET to switch it on and off. If you power up the board without the heater attached and pretend to run, pins 3&4 should have low resistance to the boards' 12V return (same return/com/gnd as in the check of the 12V).

Beyond that, idk. I'm new to this community and have no experiential knowledge of the board you're using.

I attached a snapshot of the heater output from the reprap wki's sanguinololu entry and here's the link to the full png they provide as a schematic.
[reprap.org]

As for the motors...

Step 1) determine which wires go with which.
test for continuity to find the two pairs.
Step 2) I happened across this link (here as a matter of fact!) while searching for the proper wiring for the sanguinololu board.
refer to it to hook up.

good luck!

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/22/2012 01:20AM by xiando.

Thank you, xiando. I think for a while I was just running around like a chicken without a head trying to sort this out.

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Wish I could help more but all I can say is that 24awg wire is fine for the hot end it's what I use. Mine takes 5min to hit 185C and about 8 to get to 240C. No Idea what would make it take so long besides loose connections.

All depends RegionX. If the OP built a kit, they may have reversed the FET, damaged a trace, or left a solder bridge, in addition to what was already said.

idk. the main thing is to follow a standard hardware debugging chain to located the offending issue, then resolve it. Nice thing is that this is an "easy" debug, since there are only a handful of possible reasons; failure at board, failure in wiring, failure of heater (be it a power resistor or nichrome)

("easy" being a relative term I suppose)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/23/2012 02:14PM by xiando.