New (red version) of TB6560 chinese driver board

Hey guys,
to be honest, I don't really know if this is a new version or if the manufacturer just started making them red instead of blue (old version).
New 3 Axis CNC stepper motor driver controller board | eBay

As you can see, they have started showing up on ebay, in 3- and 4-axis versions. I have a contact at goodluckbuy.com who can usually give me specs and news on products like this, but although he sells the old version his supplier has yet not offered him info on the new one.

If this version is offered at same price, and with all the problems people are having with them fixed, then it's a perfect combination.

Anybody tried the red version yet?

- Henrik

It looks to be a new version from different manufacturer.
This is the reply I got from the seller

Dear henrikn449,

This two kind of board is come from different supplier.

Why it's better than the old blue version? Look here.

With high speed isolate optical coupler can through max 15MHZ pulse,and not lose step and skewing
With high speed optical isolation and DCDC power supply isolation, the full protection of your computer parallel port and equipment in real,not spurious only with optical isolation
5V and reset use tantalum capacitors filtering wave what is better than electrolytic capacitor
Spindle can fit 10A replay
Use LM2567 microchip,low heat and enough power supply,more stable quanlity,and some other type use 78sereis common type
Use 5W cement resistance as feedback resistance,better heat performance and output drive wave than other board common resistance

Thanks!

- demosworld

Hi. Sorry to burst your bubble hspalm, but it looks like an old model board revisited. I purchased the same 3 axis 'red' board' from China back in Dec 2009. A few months ago the blue ones appeared. Typical Chinese. They just rotate their stock so it looks like new or upgraded versions are being sold.
I didn't have much trouble with the 3 axis board, although I must admit I didn't give it a lot of work. However I upgraded to a 4 axis and have been having problems with missed steps in all axes big time. I've been trying to sort this problem out for 2 weeks now and just want to get into doing some jobs. I don't know whether I want to start stuffing around trying to modify the board using the methods described in some other posts as it looks time consuming, and not being an electronics nerd (no offence meant), rather involved for my basic electronics knowledge. So I'm thinking seriously about buying a Gecko G450 board (and possibly pwr unit). Maybe with all the machine downtime so far, cheap Chinese is not so cheap in the long run.

prdp141, Thank you for the heads up!

I'm also looking into which driver board to get. I finally finished my machine today with all the motors mounted to the machines, and all i need is the board.

I looked at those chinese boards and heard they needed alot of work to get them working properly.

I was originally looking at the HobbyCNC Pro driver boards that you have to solder together. Reviews say those are good, and members on this forum back it up, so i'm being drawn to this one.

A company that is local to me SOC-Robotics (Vancouver, BC) has boards based on the TB6560 chips for the same price that are already assembled, but i've heard some people have had similar problems with it as they've had with the chinese board you posted.

The gecko 540 is best i guess, but it is pretty pricey. I just checked the website and they are now $300 each when before they were $250; what's up with that?

Other than the Gecko for high price, or the HobbyCNC Pro for resonable price, what other boards are out there for us hobbyists for good prices with proper quality?

Thanks

EDIT: Just found this driver board for an okay price: Stepperworld FET3 controller circuit board

http://www.stepperworld.com/images/FET4picLg.jpg

How many wires do you have coming out of your stepper motors?

Some of the drives that you listed are designed for bipolar motors, while the HobbyCNC Pro is designed for unipolar motors. If you have a 4-wire motor you can not use it with the HobbyCNC Pro.

i have 6 wire motors, and i believe they will work on bipolar and unipolar boards. (just use less wires)

OK, that should be fine.

BTW, the Stepperworld drivers look interesting - but I didn't see detailed documentation on the site (maybe I overlooked it somehow). The drivers do not have heat sinks, and the specs regarding actual current and voltage limits seem to be somewhat ambiguous.

i'll probably get the HobbyCNC Pro.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AssassinXCV

I'm also looking into which driver board to get. I finally finished my machine today with all the motors mounted to the machines, and all i need is the board.

I looked at those chinese boards and heard they needed alot of work to get them working properly.

I was originally looking at the HobbyCNC Pro driver boards that you have to solder together. Reviews say those are good, and members on this forum back it up, so i'm being drawn to this one.

A company that is local to me SOC-Robotics (Vancouver, BC) has boards based on the TB6560 chips for the same price that are already assembled, but i've heard some people have had similar problems with it as they've had with the chinese board you posted.

The gecko 540 is best i guess, but it is pretty pricey. I just checked the website and they are now $300 each when before they were $250; what's up with that?

Other than the Gecko for high price, or the HobbyCNC Pro for resonable price, what other boards are out there for us hobbyists for good prices with proper quality?

Thanks

EDIT: Just found this driver board for an okay price: Stepperworld FET3 controller circuit board

http://www.stepperworld.com/images/FET4picLg.jpg

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The Stepperworld drivers are very weak unipolar drivers, they only run at 3.3, 5 or 12 volts with the proper resistor.
The chinese drivers are a little better but very touchy and easily blown.
Have a look at the keling drivers as a cheap but durable and reliable option
if you can't step up to the g540.
Stepper Motor, Stepper Motor Driver,CNC Router, Stepper Motor Power Supply, Stepper Motor Kit, DC Servo Motor, Stepper Motor, Stepper Motor Driver, CNC Router, Stepper Motor Power Supply, Stepper Motor Kit, DC Servo Motor, Keling Technology Inc, USA
Hoss

Don't bother with the stepperworld drives. They use a very low performance circuit.

Hi there.
I have both the Blue and the Red boards. My machine uses the Blue board, and i think its better than the Red board.
Why?

The red board needs a perfect power supply or any type of spike will be transfered to the steppers.

The Blue board will stop all power to the steppers when the reset button is pressed in Mach 3, for example, when you finish machining something and the program stops, you press reset and no current will go to the motors therefore you can leave the machine sitting there like this untill you load another program and run it again.

The red board applies power all the time, even after the program has finished and reset pressed.
Most people know that when the steppers are idle and holding, this is when full power to the steppers is happening and thus the steppers get the hottest.

power must be removed from the RED board to avoid this which I dont like.

Unless perfect power is applied to the red board it will skip steps, the blue board wont.

They dont give you a users manual for the Red board, the Manual for the blue board can be downloaded easily enough but the manual I finally got for the Red board was Chinese only.

Just a couple of reasons I like the Blue board more than the red one.

My Blue board has never missed a step and runs great, I cant say the same for the Red board though.

Here's another one to throw into the mix:

CNC 4 Axis TB6560 Stepper Motor Driver Board Controller With Box +Mach3 Software | eBay

Uses same TB6560 chipset as the red and blue, but comes in an aluminium case.

At the price, I'm quite tempted to get one to play with.

Without heatsinks on those TB6560's, you will have a nice little hot plate to cook some eggs on in that nice aluminum box they've placed that board into. 3.5amps x 4 drivers of heat.. ouch.

I think the box is the heatsink.

From looking at the board and looking at how it sits in the case, I don't think the board is attached as a heatsink at all. I could be very wrong, but I don't think I am..

I believe the chip protrudes and touches the case on the bottom. All the chip based solutions get pretty hot even with heat sinking. They won't work without one.

I have the red board and the blue board, the blue one is junk. Anyone who tells you it doesn't miss steps is fooling you, there are threads on this site that tell you how to fix the blue boards miss step problem, the red board has the optocouplers hooked up correctly (they are also faster optocouplers) so this is not an issue.

This is not even the biggest issue. The blue board gets my motors hot quickly, the red board does not have this problem. The parallel port pinout of the two boards is drastically different, the red board has its pinout printed on the silkscreen of the board for convenience, the blue board pinout is all over the internet.

Although the red boards are handy, I could have built linistepper or similar stepper amplifiers boards for practically nothing and that would have been better.

As far as the blue TB6560 multiaxis boards go, I have one for sale if you are not convinced and still want one. Send me a PM and it can be yours.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by M)(M

I have the red board and the blue board, the blue one is junk. Anyone who tells you it doesn't miss steps is fooling you, there are threads on this site that tell you how to fix the blue boards miss step problem, the red board has the optocouplers hooked up correctly (they are also faster optocouplers) so this is not an issue.

This is not even the biggest issue. The blue board gets my motors hot quickly, the red board does not have this problem. The parallel port pinout of the two boards is drastically different, the red board has its pinout printed on the silkscreen of the board for convenience, the blue board pinout is all over the internet.

Although the red boards are handy, I could have built linistepper or similar stepper amplifiers boards for practically nothing and that would have been better.

As far as the blue TB6560 multiaxis boards go, I have one for sale if you are not convinced and still want one. Send me a PM and it can be yours.

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I also noticed something about the blue board you speak of, it looks like it uses the "enable axis" pin in Mach3 so it conflicts with the software, your totally right about it missing steps and I think that is the cause.

The red TB6560 has a "return to fault" shutdown feature, so if you get the TB6560's too warm the board just shuts down and stops supplying power to things, I also discovered if an ATX power supply is used it will shut off completely saving IC's among other components.

Cheers,

Rob
tb6560 driver board on a Rep-Rap machine

Manual for 4-axis RED TB6560 Driver Board