mvoltin
Junior Member level 1
Description of the specific problem: I have Arduino with GRBL that runs mini 3-axis CNC through three Easydrivers and it works great. Unfortunately, Easydrivers are limited in their max current and cannot handle my larger steppers. Wanted to substitute these with more robust controllers that came with the motors (as part of a older broken printers) that could take the same commands that Arduino sends to the Easydriver and control the motors. Unfortunately, these controllers (links below) have clock input instead of step input and not sure if these are interchangeble.
About the Easydriver: It uses A3967 controller with the interpreter where "By simply inputting one pulse on the STEP input the motor will take one step (full, half, quarter, or eighth depending on two logic inputs). Maximum step frequency is 500 and here is the datasheet.
So, If I substituted the Easydriver with one of the drivers listed below (and assuming that I figured out and addressed all other requirements for other pins on those drivers), can they control the motors the same way based on the Arduino outputs? The major difference I see that, instead of receiving pulses at certain frequency as these drivers would expect, they would be receiving distinct pulses at random times and this is when they should be moving the steppers (based on microstepping and direction settings).
P.S. Here is what gives me some hope but wanted to confirm and get some direction before diving in:
here is the supporting info from the Instructables site: "In it's simplest form a PWM square wave can be created with a few lines of code. The following code would produce a signal with a 1 second Frequency and a 10% duty cycle. " http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Hardware-PWM-for-stepper-motor-drives/
And here is the verbiage that scares me a little because it seems that clock input may not be just a simple collection of pulses at a certain frequency that can be easily "broken up":
1 - From IB462: The IB462H is a bipolar chopping stepper motor drive. It receives step clock,
direction and mode signals from the system controller to generate constant
phase currents which are adjustable in magnitude.
2 - And from Sanyo:The incorporation of a phase distribution IC allows the STK672-110 to control the speed of the motor based on the frequency of an external input clock signal.
P.S. I am new to electronics and probably will need "baby words" to understand whether this is feasible. thank you
About the Easydriver: It uses A3967 controller with the interpreter where "By simply inputting one pulse on the STEP input the motor will take one step (full, half, quarter, or eighth depending on two logic inputs). Maximum step frequency is 500 and here is the datasheet.
So, If I substituted the Easydriver with one of the drivers listed below (and assuming that I figured out and addressed all other requirements for other pins on those drivers), can they control the motors the same way based on the Arduino outputs? The major difference I see that, instead of receiving pulses at certain frequency as these drivers would expect, they would be receiving distinct pulses at random times and this is when they should be moving the steppers (based on microstepping and direction settings).
P.S. Here is what gives me some hope but wanted to confirm and get some direction before diving in:
here is the supporting info from the Instructables site: "In it's simplest form a PWM square wave can be created with a few lines of code. The following code would produce a signal with a 1 second Frequency and a 10% duty cycle. " http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Hardware-PWM-for-stepper-motor-drives/
And here is the verbiage that scares me a little because it seems that clock input may not be just a simple collection of pulses at a certain frequency that can be easily "broken up":
1 - From IB462: The IB462H is a bipolar chopping stepper motor drive. It receives step clock,
direction and mode signals from the system controller to generate constant
phase currents which are adjustable in magnitude.
2 - And from Sanyo:The incorporation of a phase distribution IC allows the STK672-110 to control the speed of the motor based on the frequency of an external input clock signal.
P.S. I am new to electronics and probably will need "baby words" to understand whether this is feasible. thank you