Need help with stepper drive setup

I am working on designing a specialized CNC machine and am currently in the process of determining the electrical system to control my stepper motors. The machine contains 10 stepper motors of varying sizes:

- 6x non-standard size (2 phase, 5V, 0.34A, 8.5mH/phase, 14.7ohm/phase)
- 4x NEMA 23 (2 phase, 2.3V, 3A, 3.5mH/phase, 2.4ohm/phase)

All of the motors meet the torque and requirements for my application. None of them have encoders, so they will all be on an open loop system. Two of the NEMA 23 motors will be controlling the same axis, so I plan on wiring them in parallel. All of the other stepper motors will need independent control. My goal is to drive all 10 motors from a single computing device, but after lots of searching I am still unsure on where to start.

Any insight or advice on what products to use or how to control this setup would be greatly appreciated.

Based on your description you are building a 9 axis machine. If you don't need full coordinated moves between all axes then Galil Motion Control products would be my first choice. But you are limited to 8 axes on one controller with full motion profile coordination. But it is possible to add another single axis controller to the system to control the 9th axis. I'm doing this with my lathe (4 + 1). Galil Motion Control The 40x0 series would be my choice for any new build.

There are motion controllers that have more than 8 axes but I'm not familiar with them.

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Originally Posted by Jim Dawson

Based on your description you are building a 9 axis machine. If you don't need full coordinated moves between all axes then Galil Motion Control products would be my first choice. But you are limited to 8 axes on one controller with full motion profile coordination. But it is possible to add another single axis controller to the system to control the 9th axis. I'm doing this with my lathe (4 + 1). Galil Motion Control The 40x0 series would be my choice for any new build.

There are motion controllers that have more than 8 axes but I'm not familiar with them.

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Sorry for not clarifying. It is not actually a 9 axis machine, but a 3 axis machine with 6 additional motors. The 4 NEMA 23 motors are for controlling the primary 3 axes, while the remaining 6 are used for microfluidic control.

That is still a 9 axis machine, you need stepper control of 9 separate operations, thus requiring a controller that is capable of handling that many axes. However, if you can manually set the speed on the fluidic drives, then you could use some inexpensive stepper speed controls. It all depends on the control accuracy required for the microfluidics.

Consider http://HobbyCNC.com. Build it yourself and save.