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The G540 has built quite a crowd and reputation in the market between the hobbyist and the pro. If that morphing magic between 1/10 and full step works as advertised it’s hard to beat at that price level. With a cheap DB25 breakout board, this can also work in an Arduino/GRBL setup (not just Mach/Linuxcnc).
Btw, I just noticed that right now 4x G251X drives are cheaper (4x$59) than the G540 ($299) and in that case there’s no need for the breakout board above. They could plug straight to the Protoneer hat discussed here.
hmmm well if they are underdriving the motors that much… maybe using the Paulou drivers on the Paspberry Pi Hat would not be out of the question… even if they can only put out a max of 2A.
I have asked for someone that is using that other set up to pull a amp reading while it is running to see if it is possible. If so, that would make life even simpler I would think.
Phil… you are right I suppose… I just figured it would be a bit confusing because of all the back and fourth on what parts I was/am using.
“You or I”??? does that mean you have moderator status now?
I was just taking some time to go over my wiring diagram again. This time making it a full diagram to include the 120V for powering everything. I think I am going to put each item (PowerSupply, Raspberry Pi, Fans, Router) on their own switch at the front of the table. The Raspberry Pi and Monitor will be on one. I think that would be a good idea since each item is on its own… I can let the fans run for a bit after the carve is done… I can do work on the Raspberry Pi without the rest on… stuff like that.
Any thoughts or Ideas, please feel free to express them
So I have completed my new wiring diagram… I’m not including limit switches or buttons at the moment.
Had a question folks might be able to help me with… for the wiring to my drivers from the Raspberry Pi Hat… is there a reason I could not use CAT5 (with the ends cut off) Looks like it is 24AWG… I am thinking that it is not doing anything other than sending data info and would not need to be thicker?
My Motor pigtails have 20awg wire on them… so I will probably use 18awg (just to help with voltage drop) from the driver to motors and from the power supply to the drivers… but that is a different discussion from what my current question is
To answer my Cat5 question… the guy over at the Protoneer forum says yes use it. ok I will… I have tons of it.
next bit of info:
it sounds like the Arduino is connected via serial, not via USB which is what the driver looks for so you need to Easel to look for the different port of the RPI.
/dev/ttyama0 is the CNC Hats default port.
Here is the link showing how to get Easel to look for the new com port.
… guess I am about ready to start putting this thing together and do some tests.
Small update. Had to buy a soldering iron. I got the external driver cards put together and on the back of the RPI I cloned the Y axis. Next I need to get GRBL and the CNC software on the RPI.
The other night I temp attached the power supply, drivers, and motors to a piece of plywood to run my tests on. As soon as I download the stuff I can wire the RPI to the Drivers and give it a shot.
I have been using the rpi3 + cnc hat + cncJS for a while not, just built out my panel for my new machine with the same, hooked to digital controllers for closed loop nema 23 motors.
I was wondering when the shiny blue Leadshines (or their HSS derivatives/OEMs that these look like) would make their first appearance in the forum. They have been on my list for a while.
In a dual Y setup like yours, you could even take advantage of their alarm signal to prevent a bad situation (i.e. in case one of the Y motor skips steps but the other doesn’t).
Got everything mounted for testing and it worked! I have not tried to connect it to Easel yet but i did to BCNC. I will do a little video of it tomorrow… right now i have to do a proposal for a client…
list for a while.