Y AXIS two stepper drivers or one?

Hi, just setting up my x carve and wonder what to do on the Y. Two stepper drivers or one for the nema 23s? Pros and cons for using just one?

You connect both to the same stepper driver marked Y.
However one stepper motor must have one pair of wire reversed.
Just follow the instructions and you should be just fine

I think it would depend on what control software you are going to use. The standard configuration using the standard electronics and software uses just 3 drivers.

I plan on using LinuxCNC control software an Gecko G540 4 axis driver. I will slave 2 drivers together for the Y axis that in my case is the X axis.

I think because the standard machine has extra wire length going to the far side stepper there could be a timing error that may or may not cause problems.

Dave

To truly synchronize two stepper motors and get them to equally share a load would be a difficult task, especially in an open loop design. For a machine like the X-carve it probably doesn’t make any difference.

One disadvantage of just paralleling two motors off one driver is that each motor would get roughly half the current that the driver would normally supply to one motor.

The separate driver per motor configuration would allow each motor to get full current.

Either configuration could result in a skew of the Y axis (normal build) on the X-carve. I don’t know if you would see any difference in carving a material like wood, but it might be a factor in doing very tight tolerance electronic circuit boards.

If there is any difference it would be more noticeable on the 1000mm unit than on the 500mm unit.

Thanks all, I’ll start off by running both from one driver and see how it plays out. Could probably increase the current on the (polulu a4988) driver - havent tried this before but will investigate. If I have trouble I have wired up the X-carve to take use of the extra driver slot on the CNC shield (running GRBL).