Buying Advice: Stepper Motor Control Electronics

Hi,

I have a machine that I'm building for my own use. I'm looking for advice on what control board/mother-board and also what drivers to buy for my machine that is most optimal for my requirements/budget. I'm going to be purchasing everything directly from this company:

https://www.geckodrive.com

So, I've got everything mechanically sorted out, everything is purchased and waiting to be set up but I know very little about electronics. I know the control board you buy is highly dependent on what G-code sender you use so I'm going to be buying the hobby version of Mach 4.

So I've shelled out on some pretty good ball-screw mechanisms and don't want to spend that much more but also don't want to bottleneck the accuracy added by the ball-screws. I essentially want 1 thou tolerance on my parts so hopefully that information will suffice to properly select a control board and drivers.

It's a 3 axis machine, so I will need 3 drivers, but might be adding on a 4th axis at some point. The motors will be Nema 23 Steppers. I was going to ask the guys over at Gecko for advice but I thought it wouldn't hurt to get a third-party opinion. If someone knowledgeable in this area could give me some advice on what to buy precisely to maintain my requirements and not spend more money then necessary that would be greatly appreciated.

A shopping list would be ideal. Thanks

- David.

For Mach4: The Ethernet smoothstepper, ESS is the way to go.
Then CNC4PC have some decent breakout boards. Or the UCSB from cncdrive. You only need a fast one for the axis drives and any encoders, the rest don't matter as much they'll end up being mostly switching. This will help with costs.
If keeping costs down but want good standard stepper setup, this will do nicely:
Nema24 stepper: https://www.omc-stepperonline.com/p-...s-24hp39-5004s
Stepper driver: https://www.omc-stepperonline.com/di...4-motor-dm860t
Running these on 80v gives awesome velocity and acceleration. The steppers are about the best there are in the size and price range and great driven at the higher voltage.

If your thinking of using AC servos then get the ones from Delta.

I wouldn't bother with Gecko stuff.