Stepper Motor Calculator .ods

Excellent

Thank you for posting such a useful resource.

Tweakie.



(for those with MS Office, attached is an Excel version of Dave's calculator)

 

Way cool, I could of used it much earlier and get myself a more appropriate power supply, not to forget trying to figure the use of the few online calculators and such. I don't recall any of them taking into account the inductance or suggesting the ideal voltage.

The built in "mm to inches" is a nice touch as well.

The protection of fields (the formulae, people don't need to mess with them) along with the highlighting of input fields is great Yes, it would be nice to know what the formulae actually are. But I trust they have been validated.

Since I was raised with a touch of "there is always better", I'll permit myself to make a few suggestions, most being more for looks than actual function :

• throw in a bit of of conditional formatting to avoid display of "division by zero". With some formulae magic you could show a "-" or "missing input" instead of letting the standard error text. I tend to be OCD with these aspects.
• you could simply use default input values, such as info for OBPS steppers and such, so the beginner has a valid starting point and maybe just want to pick the right power supply to do a build.
• which brings up : could also indicate a 'minimum' amp value for the power supply, especially if suggestion below is done. Sure, it can be an obvious calculation for many, but it just gives that little extra to your calculator.
• have three, or at least two, near identical blocks, one for X and Y with an other for Z, or one for each : X, Y and Z ? Thus allowing the user do all three axis side by side and experiment with different steppers, mechanism and power supply before buying them. Your calculator could actually be used to tweak 'ideal' configuration to a target speed and precision. One can't expect much better than what the steppers and such being used allow for within their specs. Going beyond is ... looking over the edge of the 'planet'.
• could even have a 'copy from' cell for each of Y and Z to have the calculator copy inputs from X in a single click since typically Y is same as X while Z could be different having a smaller/different stepper and using ACME screw instead of GT2 or GT3.

A future versions could start looking at adding speed and feed rate calculation/factoring. It might be difficult given G-Wizard takes into account 50+ parameters to make it a 'true' science and still indicate reality could be off a bit... But "basics" would probably be great as a starting point for most of us. We might aim for perfection, but we are probably all happy/comfortable with a 'it works for me'.

Great work. I'll cross reference the OXcalculator to this calculator for certain.

 

Indeed yours would be perfect for those, like me, who kind of blindly bought steppers and power supply. Well, I sort of had an idea, but certainly did not pick the ideal power supply (voltage is low at 12 volts !)

No problem for the rought edges, it works and is useful as is.

By the way, the cells are locked but there was no password in the copy I downloaded earlier.

I have to tweak the OXcalculator a bit more, but, if you want, I could spend a bit of time making some of my suggestions into what you have done so far. If you are ok with it, I could do an hybrid of both calculators at some point. With the proper attribution, of course. It be a nice marriage of the two... By then, I'll probably protect the cells people should not mess with, but have no password for those who want to tinker some more.

 

Perfect. I'll be looking at it this weekend. Right now I think I have the squaring issue with myOX licked So I want to confirm before moving ahead with everything else even closely related.

 

I believe I have it under control now, but I am all ears (eyes) if you want to share your trick. Maybe I can make double sure myOX is as square as it can be (in my hands). Others might find it of value as well.

Quick measurements and I think I'm down to about 1 mm off, end to end of the 1500 mm length. I'll know better when the weekend comes with tests and careful measurements.