C-Beam Sphinx Electronics Help

I am building a Kyo C-Beam Sphinx. Mainly for wood some aluminum (building plates out of mdf then using the machine to make the aluminum plates). I had originally wanted to design a machine that I could use to carve aluminum molds for lead fishing lures as well as various wood projects, but quickly realized that would not be doable on my 1k budget, so am settling for something that can handle simple alu plates and wood.

Originally my plan was to get nema 23 high torque with the tinyg or the cnc xpro (not sure which yet). I like that I can plug in directly to Mac and don't need a secondary computer and that I can use free open source software and it has pwm for my spindle controller. When I finished designing the frame and looked into the electronics I realized that the tinyg can't drive the 3a the nemas needed. So I considered the DQ542ma from the part store but this is out of my budget because I will need 4 of them which is another 160 dollars and I am already at my 1k budget with the nemas and the tinyg. So I thought ok ill downgrade to the 170oz nemas, but I see they need 2.8a so the tinyg still doesn't work.

So I started searching around and found some sets that have the motors, drivers and the power supplies, & controller. Like the wantai motors on eBay and the sainsmart sets. Problem is the wantai comes with a serial port controller so there goes using my Mac, I would have build a linuxcnc machine to complement the cnc which I do not want to do and no spindle control. The sainsmart sets all come with a mach3 board so that means I would have to buy mach3 thus negating the savings.

So I researched some more and found that (if I am understanding correctly) I can use either nema23 with the tinyg it just won't receive more than 2.5a but it won't damage them.

So my question is should I use the tinyg and undercut the nemas or does anyone know of more affordable driver options that I have not found? Because everything that I looked at that can drive the nemas is out of my price range. After the frame and the spindle I have about 330 to spend on the controller, power supply, steppers and drivers if I need them.

thanks for the help and if I missed a post with these answer I apologize please share it and ill read it to see if it helps.

 

Thanks joe. I watch Kyla videos on that and it looks sweet only thing is it's still out of my budget the nemas Are 40 each so that's 160 and the drivers from openbuilds 40 each so that's 320 plus the pi and hat would be another hundred so 420 I only have 300 for the electronics. Cheapest drivers I could find that would run this (saw it in a comment on kyo video) is the tb6560. But I read some bad things about it. Does anyone know of a good affordable drive for nema 23 with the arduino or the pi?

 

thanks chadrat. I don't currently have a pc just my Mac. But I am considering getting one because like you said most of the affordable kits have parallel ports. if I went that route do any of the breakout boards that have the parallel ports work with linuxcnc?

 

Joe, yea I was looking at those but they and all of the wantai, sainsmart and even steppers online kits all come with parallel port breakout boards. which is why I was hesitant to go that route. as I have a Macbook and no pc/monitor to hook up parallel boards to.

also considering buying one of those sets and just getting a Arduino and hooking it all up to that since they are cheap and try to sell the breakout board.

 

thanks all for the information. I agree ChadRat6458 that onboard drivers don't seem to hack it from what I have read. Except for the gradus with the Bigfoot I am considering that. I am really leaning towards the rasberri pi w/ protoneer hat, that Kyo uses like Joe suggested.

I have a few questions about the pi though, that will affect my decision

1) whats the advantage of using the hat vs direct connecting the drivers to the pi? also whats the advantage of the hat vs connecting another controller board such as the gradus to the pi?

2) can I run a rasberri pi set up from my Mac? I like the idea of having a small computer because eventually I do want to make a proper enclosure with the drivers and the pi in it and a small screen etc. But I don't want a big chunky desktop. But in the mean time since I don't even have an extra monitor to plug the pi into, so I would need to be able to run it with the Mac as well.