I am very new to stepper motors and machine building. So I completely expect that I am the source of the problem. However, I am running an Arduino Uno and some stepper motor drivers (Motor shield v2.3) from Ada fruit. The Adafruit steppers work fine where as the open build steppers jerk around and mumble with tremors when the program is idle. I have played around with the wire pairs to no avail, always keeping coil pairs together. I am running them with a 12 V 3amp Meanwell power supply. I only have two stepper motors running. Both steppers are Nema-17, why would they behave differently?
Hi Bribeck, those little adafruit steppers are only 350mA motors, the Openbuild ones are 1800mA (they are bigger). You probably need to turn up the current on the drivers to get the coils fully energized, I have no idea how to do this on those boards. Cheers Gary
Thanks Gary, that seems obvious now. I assumed that Nema-17 was a standard spec. for power and dimensions of a motor...perhaps just the footprint and/or mounting? I searched and learned that 17 represents 1.7 inches. Makes sense. I bought an Acro set up to move a device x,y,z under minimal load. I plan to move X-Y with a joystick. Z with a lever, rocker or two way toggle. User defined motion, no pattern files. That is why I chose Arduino with motor driver shields. Do you think that I could run that gantry with 350mA motors? If not, I need to upsize my control board and power supply.
Isn't there a way to change the current setting with those sheilds? I looked at the stepper control page and there is no mention of changing amps it but they say it can do 1.2A which would overheat those little adafruit motors quick. 1.2A would be plenty to drive the Openbuilds nema17 There are many options which would be better for $20 each, those shields are made to do many things which you don't need, like driving servos and dc motors. Gary
I just discovered the 350mA stepper is too weak for z axis. What joystick controlled option is available to drive 4 1800mA steppers?
If you are using Arduino already just get drivers. Did you already acquire the control program for Arduino and the joystick?
I use an arduino, 4 DQ542MA drivers and Estlcam with an xbox controller to move jog my machine around. I am not sure if that will work for you but here is an example of what it can do: I can also type in commands to travel a certain distance along the x.y. and z axis. It is free to try out for as long as you want.
