I'm spec'ing out either a LEAD or WORKBEE, with an interest in cutting aluminum and hardwoods. I see that the motors can support up to 48V, but the blackbox controller seems to be limited to 24V. 1) Is there any way to use blackbox for main control and still get higher motor voltage? For example, is it possible to daisy chain blackbox to a DQ542MA Stepper Motor Driver to get 48V? 2) Is it worth it? Assuming so for aluminum, and potential holding power and possible speed ... but I don't know. I guess the tradeoff is that the blackbox seems like a fairly easy starting point. Perhaps I start there, and replace/upgrade later to something else.
We highly recommend sticking to our recommended motors. Voltage or current ratings alone doesnt paint the whole picture. We spent a lot of R&D selecting motors that work optimally with the whole system, and you can avoid a lot of frustration and schoolfees by trusting that. Our motors are 3v coil rated, so the chopper drivers can do their thing with the 24v coming in. Our inductances has been selected for optimal acceleration, and the drivers in BlackBox went through a 2 year R&D cycle to get the oscillators tuned optimally. High voltage motors are bad, you want motors rated way below the supply, so that a modern chopper driver can perform the correct funcationality to create the pseudo sine wave that runs them, and maintain fast rise times
Peter, thank you for the reply. I'll try to do some more research along the lines that you mentioned.
You could use four DQ54MA's with a $12 Arduino Uno (Running GRBL), no need for Blackbox with it's build in drivers also running GRBL. But the BlackBox is so clean (easy to wire) and simple, most adequate for our hobby use case. Cheers Gary
And the drivers in BlackBox is just about on par with the DQ542MAs (while higher voltages are nice for fast acceleration, keep in mind it is an extrusion based machine, and there are mechanical limits as well, no use sticking a F1 engine in your daily driver? (;
