Open builds stepper motors out of stock?

If you are planning to order in about 3 - 4 weeks, you should be fine.

 

Good to hear. I got the LEAD Machine on preorder without the motors because none were in stock. I will wait for the motors to become available here. This is my first CNC machine and I want everything to be compatible.

 

I'm hoping they will be in stock soon myself. I bought a Workbee 1010 two weeks ago and I'm ready to start cutting. I'm not new to cnc, but I am new to DIY hobby machines so I'm a bit leery about buying elsewhere in fear of incompatibility issues. I watch the parts store daily for them to be back in stock

 

It would be nice if we could preorder the motors so that we didn't have to check back everyday.

 

That would be nice. I think I'll email the openbuilds people and ask about that.

 

I ordered my Lead CNC on 22 Feb. At that time the estimated ship date was 28 Feb, still awaiting fulfillment as of today. Steppers were out of stock as well at that time. If anyone gets an update on things, please advise...

 

Thanks Gray - sent them a note via email. I'm sure they're working through a pile of orders for the Lead. A question on the steppers... if the OpenBuilds steppers are out of stock for another month, is this motor from Amazon a good substitute? Any issues with this one that anyone can see? High Torque Nema 23 CNC Stepper Motor 114mm 425oz.in/3Nm CNC Mill Lathe Router

 

I looked at these also. The shaft on the openbuilds steppers are 1/4 inch and shaft on these from Amazon are 10mm. I don't know if that means it can't work or you may just have to modify the flex coupling to the lead screw.

 

I'm going to be using the new Black Box controller from the parts store - already on order. So I assume with all these differences I should just wait on the Openbuilds motors. I really hope they're not a month or more out. I'm too excited to wait that long to get the machine built!

 

I'm going to wait it out also(for a little while anyway). My workbee 1010 is still in the boxes so if I have to return it I can. I don't want to, but if openbuilds can't get motors or at least direct us where to get them I may have to. I chose the openbuilds machine over the shapeoko because of the lead screw option. Lead screws aren't much use if you can't turn them.

 

Can someone from the openbuilds team tell me if this is a compatible stepper motor. I've got a workbee 1010 with xpro V4 controller. @Rick 2.0

Nema23 CNC Stepper Motor 425oz-in 112mm 3A 2.8N.m 1.8° 4 lead wire for CNC Router Engraving Milling Lathe Machine https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B0774XR6V5/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_14sFCb47DNN52

 

I looked at those as well, but was looking for the higher torque. I plan on cutting aluminum with my machine. Thanks for your help.

 

I do recommend the STEPPERONLINE motors, for anyone who needs any in a hurry while they're waiting. Nicely-packed, with good literature, at very reasonable prices. And of course, that Prime shipping!

Ditto also on not over-driving the machine. Having motors on there that are capable of more than the machine itself is a recipe for bent screws and twisted rails. Get whatever torque matches the OpenBuilds "high torque" motor, because they've already thought about what's appropriate for the extrusion frames.

Plus, on the technical side, the higher the torque at a given frame size, the further out of whack your inertial coupling is going to be (limiting force transfer efficiency, translating to acceleration, largely), and on top of that the slower your accelerations are gonna be capable of being because the increased self-inductance (because of intrinsic higher inductance for more torque) is gonna limit how fast your coils can come up to full current. You want the smallest possible motors you can get away with, and typically (for higher-speed motion) it's better to go up a frame size and keep it short than to get enormously long high-torque motors. High torque winds are for lower-speed builds.

 

I just tested- $15 in US UPS shipping for three motors puts it above the Amazon price, even with a 3+ volume discount on the motors. Other countries and motor sizes may vary, of course.

If you're of the boycott-Amazon persuasion, it's not enough of a price difference to get enormously concerned about. Maybe $2 a motor.

 

Thanks for the info guys. I'm learning all of this as I go here. I'm a trade machinist with 20 years experience so I'm not new to cnc but I am definitely a noob to building a hobby machine. Especially with the electronics side of it. I'm used to industrial equipment with servos and plenty of machine weight.

 

Those are good prices! Looks like they have USPS shipping options as well, which would put them at a really good price point, albeit perhaps at a slower shipping speed.

Bear in mind all the lessons you learned on the job still apply. Extrusion machines are a sort of hack, a workaround to avoid needing castings, servos, weldments, and all the other heavy, expensive, and power-hungry stuff that kept CNC away from hobbyists. But mass and damping, resonance bands, rigidity, etc etc all still apply. The more you can make a machine like a "real" machine, the better it's going to perform- because the real deal have been under development for decades, and the laws of physics are fairly immutable.

Of course, for some things like lasers, pick'n'place, etc, they're absolutely perfect. Light and fast is exactly what you want. But a 3D printer or a gantry router, however good it may be, would be better if it was made of cast iron and ran on servos and ballscrews. There are hybrids, where people fill their extrusion with sand or screw linear rail to aluminum extrusion and things like that, it's just a case of finding the point where you're happy with the performance, I suppose. Plenty of people are perfectly happy with their machine performance right out of the box, which is fantastic!

Not to be discouraging or anything, I think the rise of the extrusion machine hobby is great and we've all seen solid results from even plywood machines, just an important point that occasionally bears repeating, I think.

 

Is there any ETA on when the motors we will available again? Thanks.

 

The openbuilds team told me as soon as this week. You should email support and ask them to process an order for you. They will send you a PayPal invoice and you can basically prepay and they will ship the motors when they are in stock. This is what I did, hopefully they ship out this week.

 

Nice! They are back in stock. I just got 4. Thanks!

 

Yeah, I looked earlier and saw they were in stock again. Hopefully I'll be getting a email soon saying mine have shipped.