[PLHS54]

I'm really interested in building my own cnc machine. I've looked around online and I'm slightly confused. I see some kits that require a power supply, breakout board, stepper driver, and motor to run. And others, like zen tool works cnc, (to my knowledge) only needs power supply, breakout board, and motor to run. This leads to my question.

Why do some cnc machines need stepper drivers while others do not?

What does a stepper driver do?

[doorknob]

I looked up the Zen toolworks 12x12 kit, and it does not need a breakout board - rather, the breakout board function is integrated into the stepper driver board that they supply with the kit. You will need to connect a 25-pin "straight-through" cable from your PC's LPT port to the stepper driver board, and you will need to hook up stepper motors to the "other end" of the stepper driver board.

A stepper driver board converts step and direction "logic" signals for each axis (generated by the Mach3 software) into the high-power voltage/current signals that actually make the stepper motors move, by the desired amount (either in full steps or in fractional "microsteps") in the desired direction.

[PLHS54]

Thanks for the quick reply. So does the Zen CNC machine has both the drivers for each axis and breakout board integrated into one "chip" for lack of better words? Is there any down side to this? Could you use this same method for DIY CNC builds?

[doorknob]

It is integrated into a single board.

The potential advantage of that approach is cost reduction.

A downside of that approach is that if you manage to burn out the driver for one of the axes, it is not as simple to get up and running again as it would be if you had a separate driver per axis that you could simply replace. Instead, you would need to either repair the board or else discard the board and replace three drivers at once (either by getting a replacement board or three separate drivers).

Choosing which type of driver to use is one of the decisions that people who are building their own CNC from scratch need to make. A lot of people buy TB6560-based multi-axis driver boards (like the one that Zen supplies) in order to save money, only to find out that it does not perform according to their expectations.

There are other types of drivers that have a built-in breakout board function and handle multiple axes with a single board - for example, the HobbyCNC driver board kits or the four-axis Gecko G540 are popular alternatives to getting a separate driver per axis.

[PLHS54]

Thank you so much. I don't know if this is the right place to ask. But is can you point me into the right direction to read up on all cnc electronics. Like how to choose the correct power supply, and stepper motors and the like?

[doorknob]

There are a lot of different places that I could suggest.

For example, PMinMO.com (look for the index at the right side of the page).

Or perhaps Stepper Motors

[ger21]

Geckodrive Stepper Motor Basics

[PLHS54]

I have another general question. Can you use a 5 axis driver board on a 3 axis cnc machine?