Stepper Motor Drivers?

[jim The STEAM Clown - Jim Burnham]

What Stepper Motor Driver modules do you recommend.  I know this may have been asked in the past, and I did search the forum... but alas I can't find the answer. 

I have some Nima17, 23, and larger motors I want to drive.  Some applications will drive only super light loads.  I feel like the TB6600's would work, but I also see a lot of disparaging reports that they can't drive heavy loads like a large CNC that has some strong cutting force.

What do you recommend? DM556T?  This Best Drivers says pick based on your current/motor size and for even big DIY CNC the DM556T is good enough... and most small motor applications (Nima 17 with a small load) are fine with the TB6600.

Thoughts?

-- Jim

[Chris Albertson]

There is more to it than just matching up how many amps the driver can supply and what your motor uses.

I hate to say it, but what is best depends on the intended use of the motor.   With industrial robots, CNC, and automation, the size and weight of the driver itself hardly matters because it will be in a box mounted to the wall or the floor.  But if the driver has to go inside a battery-powered mobile robot, then you care a lot about physical size and weight.

We also need to know the voltage to need.   The motors are rated for volts but that is only for very low-speed use and to go faster you need to use much higher voltage, perhaps up to 36 volts for your small motor but more likely 24 volts.

The next question is if you intend to use "micro-steps" or not and how many steps per second you will run to get the speed you need after any gear reduction

Then, do you care about noise and heat enough to pay extra to be rid of it?

Finally, you can not buy a driver based on the NEMA frame size.  Moters with the same frame can vary by a factor of maybe 4x

The TB6600 is the entry-level driver that works for most low-performance applications.  It's cheap too.   

All that said, if this is a fixed, non mobile robot just to to Stepper Online and select what they are saying is their premium driver for your motor size.  Their web site is actually very accurate.  Some of what they say seems like marketing.  But it is accurate.  I bet yu could use their DM332T driver.

www.omc-stepperonline.com/digital-stepper-driver/digital-stepper-drive-

  O you might consider the integrated controller like ISD02 for double the price as not quite a good  but you can reduce some wire clutter.  

www.omc-stepperonline.com/digital-stepper-driver/integrated-stepper-motor-

I would not buy a simple analog driver.  if you have space for the above.   But if this is for a mobile robot space is important look at this style of driver.  There are more on the market but here is a start omc-stepperonline.com/analog-stepper-driver/drv8825-stepper-

I buy all my stepper and controller from these place.  They are reliable and have actually documentations and can ship from not only Chna  but keep stock in the US and Europe for faster shipping

One more idea.   If you have not yet bought the motor consider "Closed Loop" Stepers.    They have dramatically better performance.   But also a higher price.  They used to be out of my budget but prices have fallen for every kind of stepper   So now even these closed lop steppers are at hoby price prints.   And again read what they say about then n their web site.  

Lastly.  There is an open source project to build FOC drivers that can work on cheap steppers.   This is what the above "closed loop" steper is but in DIY Open Source format.  If you are building a balance-bot this is 100% the way to go.

If you don't need performance, I have built stepper drivers using a few 2n2222 transistors connected to Aruino pins.  Cost under $1

Thoughts?

-- Jim

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Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California

[Chris Albertson]

On Wed, Feb 9, 2022 at 1:05 PM jim The STEAM Clown - Jim Burnham <jim.the.s...@gmail.com> wrote:

  This Best Drivers says pick based on your current/motor size and for even big DIY CNC the DM556T is good enough... and most small motor applications (Nima 17 with a small load) are fine with the TB6600.

Sorry for the ling winded answer, this might be closer to what was asked.

It does depend on the reseller.  Many Chinese resellers stamp popular parts numbers on cheep drivers and you never know what you get.  Stepper-online is pretty straight forward and tells yu if it is a top-teir or "bargain" driver o their web site.    But prices have compressed and now there is little difference.

This also means yu don't have money by going cheap because the top-end "lead shine" brand is no longer a $200 item

I have a collection of these I bought over the years.  The old ones have big heat sinks on them and made nose when they drove the motor.  The new ones cost less, stay cool enough they are housed on a plastic enclosure with no heat sink and are silent and will drive the same motor with a much higher speed using the same power supply and computer.

Do not "over buy".   The driver pictured in the article you linked has current limiting switches but the lowest setting is enough to burn up a smaller motor.  You want to set the current limit below the motor's stall current.  For testing, use the lowest limit that still allows the motor to move

This is also a dynamic market and they continuously upgrade the drivers.  Just get the latest one matched to your use case. (which we still don't know)

 

[jim The STEAM Clown - Jim Burnham]

Ha... Chris, never never apologize for providing too much info.  It was all appreciated, and I'm actually having some of my students mull it over.  my current stepper projects are some low torc CNC-like projects, plus one larger DIY CNC machine.

-- Jim

[Chris Albertson]

I built a CNC conversion for a Harbor Freight mill.   A key to getting it right is to understand gearing.  I used two ACME lead screws and one ball-screw.  The two are very different.  The ball-screw has a large pitch and the ACME scews are fine pitch.     Both are driven by timing belts with pulley ratios selected to match steps to linear distance "correctly"

Because you get to select pulley ratios you can trade motor power for speed and never have to compromise of machine accuracy.  A small budget just means you move slower

I 3D print the pulley rims and epoxy then to steel hubs.   (plastic hubs do not last long)

My next goal is to learn to splice the belt material so I can make custom size belts on short notice.  I just bough a 10 meter roll of rubber belt.

With a roll of open loop belt and the ability to print custom size pulleys you can see whatever motors you have

BTW, I d not see a difference between robots and CNC.  Call my machine a "robot mill"

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[Mark Johnston]

For a balencing bot I did a month or so ago it used Nema17 steppers which I bet have the torque required for the CNC conversion but not sure.
Anyway, I bought at first some DRV8825 drivcers and they were crap and 'popped' easily so I feel the protection on those is not good.
I had the best luck and great results using the A4988 variety.  Note that pinouts are nearly the same to the DRV8825.   
Anyway, both of these have the step pulse pin and the direction pin sort of interface.
I used them with one of the MANY Nema 17 varients AND I calibrated the current with the little pot on the driver.
The Nema 17 stepper I used was a 62 oz  42mm 1.8 deg stepper.   What you must know is the required torque spec to move your mill which is likely more than I needed for a blance bot with very low torque needs.  

Hope this helps.   Oh and I have a harbor freight mill and lathe and just upgraded my lathe chuck to 4" but alas, I digress.    Good luck!   Mark

[Chris Albertson]

I did a CNC conversion of an HF mill.   Those little NEMA 17 steppers are way too small.  A milling machine, even the HF mini mill has a lot of friction and moving mass.  Do not even think of using those little drivers that look like 16-pin dip chips.   Very nice full size drivers are now available for just over $20 each  and then you'd want a 36 volt 12 amp power supply.

The bigger decision is how to do the mechanical parts.   I opted to keep the X and Y lead screws and go with a ball screw for Z.     Almost all the other parts I use are 3D printed.  Yes, 3D printed plastic can be strong enough as it only has to take the reaction force  from  a 4 Newton Meter motor.

I am considering going with a "closed-loop" stepper driver for Z.   The Z-axis on an HF conversion needs to be strong as the entire head is lifted up the column and the motor must support that wight against gravity and still move in < 0.001" or 0.01mm increments.  The design files I used are online someplace, but there are a few changes I'd  make

For software, Linux CNC (LCNC) is the way to go and use one of the Mesa FPGA cards, don't bother with parallel ports in 2022.

LCNC is flexible enough to drive any machine you could make.  I'm working on a fourth axis.  This would allow full 3D shapes to be cut.   realistically the conversion costs a bit over $500 if you can print the parts,    My plan was to print the parts then use the plastic parts to make metal parts but then found that metal parts would not make the machine better.

Here is a the design I used.  It is not complete but you can see where the moters go and how they connect to the existing parts

https://a360.co/3BHx4o4

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