Making your own powerful Controller on the cheap side

Maybe you would want to know the policy of Inventables for DIY X-Controllers. Will Easel be available for non-inventables controllers in future?

Maybe the X-Controller is not the cheapest but for a business the support for both soft and hardware would make it worth the money.

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If only I would have know about that before I bought the x-controller. I looks solid.

Remember that the Xcontroller is still an Arduino based controller, they just made a custom board that had it integrated on the board instead of using a prepackaged Arduino Uno.

That being said, the schematics are open source and a quick price list indicated major components including 4 drivers are like $30 for the ICs. You’ll need some more for heatsink, caps, resistors, etc. and some circuit layout work but you could make your own. youd be able to reuse your current power supply which probably makes up a good sized chunk of the Xcontroller price.

In fact, if you could order an Xcontroller without a power supply, it may make the cost more bearable. Maybe put in an email to Inventables to see if that’s an option?

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Why not work with the Inventables team to spec out your wants/needs and see if they could develop a new and improved XController version? Just like v1 to v2 of the entire XCarve machine, the XController could enjoy a new revision. Perhaps all it needs is to replace the circuit board/driver and not the entire box with the power supply, etc. I’d like it to deliver a separate 4th axis driver not slaved as two Y drivers like it is now.

Don’t know if this would help out any but this is where i get all my stuff.

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Just curious but why not go with four so that the Y isn’t shared current? It’d be easy to slave two together. That is what the Xcontroller implemented.

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How about fastened together with a spiral inclined plane around a central core?

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I had to contemplate using wood for nixie clocks that I build because of heat and an old man I know said “well when I was a young’n all of our gizmos were in wooden boxes , radios and what not and they all got hot as hell and never caught fire” I felt like an idiot afterwards …

I used wood.image

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No, but I’m running open frame with the drivers up.[quote=“PhilJohnson, post:36, topic:33328”]
Mind if I steal the idea and make my own?
[/quote]

Don’t mind at all.

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Yeah, I tend toward the practical side, my artistic skills are rated - needs improvement – needs a lot of improvement.

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And rgb led lighting

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Definitely need to keep the evil spirits out of the electronics!

everyone knows that magic smoke keeps the chips working, If you let the magic smoke out they stop working. :slight_smile:

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2A ramps up and down with smaller steps
2B ramps up and down with larger steps

A really poor analogy would be the difference between a variable speed drill/driver and an impact drill/driver.

One gets you smoother action the other gets you slightly rougher action with a little more umph.

Mine is set at 2A for Z.

I haven’t done any testing with this, but now that you brought it up I may have to take a look at it.

[Edit] - Yes, the stock NEMA 23s are 2.8 amps/phase

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You’re supposed to use cardboard for design tasks like that. Don’t you know that CAD stands for Cardboard Aided Design???

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Yes.

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Keep the updates going Phil, I’m building a component list and watching intently. Need a good setup for my new cnc.

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This will be my next upgrade for sure. Thanks @PhilJohnson

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The current settings on that controller are peak amps. Try the 2.5 setting. If your steppers are running cool, try 3 amps. Assuming a 24 volt power supply. I have .1 " per revolution lead screws. 4x seams to work best on my machine. Our High School Robotics team has been using donated Gerber Dimension router with an Arduino and these stepper drivers. Things are working very well. They do generate heat. We have them mounted in a NEMA enclosure with a power supply. The power supply has a powerful 90mm fan that really stirs up the air in the box. We have a small 40MM fan exhausting the box and the drivers are running cool. We have run some marathon 10 hour jobs and everything is working well with these drivers.

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