Nah just minor little cosmetic tweaks, one extra diode, and the RGB led changes from always on, to on when the 24v is on (so it works as a power indicator). Always little tweaks in search of absolute perfection.

 

that RGB LED.... I wonder if I can shoehorn an ATmega328 in there somewhere that drives it with different colours? Maybe sense motor on and coolant on and set colour accordingly. (-:

 

(; someday when we get Gnea - ws2812 addressable LEDs (;

 

According to this fan speed calculator you would need a 120Ohm 2W resistor...
Or one of these converters
Cheers
Gary

 

I think I have the answer to this ...
on the board is the header where you select which of X Y or Z gets duplicated onto the extra driver.
so we have the step and direction pins for all the axes on those pins and can make a connection there.
OpenBuilds BlackBox 4X Documentation
Just be sure to not jumper what you don't want jumpered (-:

 

While I am here can someone explain the 'emporer' in Braille on the Blackbox?

 

The BlackBox is not designed for external drivers.

 

As noted previously:

Edit: a corrected page would be TB67S109AFNG | Motor Drivers | Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation | Americas – United States (same basic driver but in the form factor used.)

 

Isnt it empower?

Edit: Its is: https://openbuilds.com/empower/

Edit the edit: obfuscator

 

No they are a Toshiba chip as mentioned elsewhere.

I would use DQ542 drivers, very happy with mine.
DQ542MA Stepper Motor Driver

 

Great drivers but the BlackBox won't accept external drivers.

 

Yeah in principle the BlackBox fulfills that "Arduino+Drivers in one box" vision. So for external drivers, why buy a $150 board with built-in drivers if you dont use the drivers. A $20 arduino (Get a geniune one, the $3fakes with CH340 USB chips doesnt cut it) wired to the DQ542s will serve you better in that application: Video below


Unless of course you are building one of our typical machines, then you dont need external drivers, the TB67S109s on the BlackBox kicks out a lot of power.
3.2A RMS (The competition's tipycal choice of DRV8825s are 1.5A RMS)

 

Well, I see see headers J7 and J9 with all the step and direction signals on them and I know that if I plug an external driver onto the correct pins on those headers then it will work to duplicate an existing driver.

So if I jumper on the middle 2 pins to duplicate Y onto the extra onboard driver and then I want to duplicate X as well (for a 5th driver to drive 2 X motors), I just connect the external driver to pin 6 on each header. So long as the external driver does not draw too many milliamps and make the processor pin suffer, this will work to duplicate axes to external drivers.

Peter said:

but the original poster @PPAR said:

So he needs 6 drivers to drive 6 motors. The blackbox can drive 4 with the onboard drivers and another 2 through step/dir off the J7/J9 headers with only a little extra wiring and no danger to the board that I can see..

Stop shooting this down guys, we are here to innovate! (unless you have technical reasons why this should not be done, in which case state them and make PPAR buy something for somewhere else).

 

you mean only 2 external extras since one axis can be duplicated to the 4th driver in the BlackBox. (-:

 

Ahh ok! yes in that case, you can do what David suggested: You can grab the signals from the pins circled in purple:
left side header is STEP, right side is DIR. XYZ is labelled too. #innovating!



And yeah I'd try use the same drivers too