[modric]

Hello Lucas. Sorry on OT. Can you please advice me which driver to buy? I have post thread in "want to buy section"? At first I tried to do something with similar one, cheap from ebay but didn't achive much.
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/want_b...ol_driver.html

P.S.
I am newbie and this forum is only way to learn something about this things.
Thank you in advance.

[Boxelder]

I love it when someone with exceptional knowledge of a relatively specialized area of study shares what they find with the rest of the class. Keep it up, Lucas! Have you torn down and evaluated any of the Geckodrive products? Thoughts on them? Are there any lower-cost drivers which meet a minimum level of acceptability in your opinion?

[Boxelder]

Oh wow, I just found your kit! Never mind about the last question, and thanks very much for putting this together.

[lucas]

Hello Lucas. Sorry on OT. Can you please advice me which driver to buy? I have post thread in "want to buy section"? At first I tried to do something with similar one, cheap from ebay but didn't achive much.
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/want_b...ol_driver.html
.

The motors you have are a bit weak, also their inductance is high (= no torque at high speed) and this will not allow you to achieve 800mm/min with M8 leadscrews.
You could try with ACME or trapezium style screws with have a higher pitch, but I'm afraid that those motors won't be strong enough to get decent results.
Been there, done that a long time ago and it didn't work for me. You will need 1Nm (minimum) motors with low inductance ( 2-2.5 mH) and good screws with a pitch of approx. 3mm/turn.

I love it when someone with exceptional knowledge of a relatively specialized area of study shares what they find with the rest of the class. Keep it up, Lucas! Have you torn down and evaluated any of the Geckodrive products? Thoughts on them? Are there any lower-cost drivers which meet a minimum level of acceptability in your opinion?

"exceptional knowledge" is exagerated, there are people here with more knowledge on the subject.
I have some Gecko drives and they are great, if you want a trouble free setup: buy them. They work perfectly with most motors and they will get the most out of them.
Within limits of course, you can't expect a weak motor to drive a heavy gantry.
Leadshine has some good drivers also, donno about the pricing.
The DIY THB6064 drives are working fine if you have decent motors.

Bottom line: Gecko is a class apart and can't be compared with the cheap Chinese Ebay drives but there are some in between wich can be used satisfactory if you match motors, drives and screws to use the motors within their specifications.

[modric]

The motors you have are a bit weak, also their inductance is high (= no torque at high speed) and this will not allow you to achieve 800mm/min with M8 leadscrews.
You could try with ACME or trapezium style screws with have a higher pitch, but I'm afraid that those motors won't be strong enough to get decent results.
Been there, done that a long time ago and it didn't work for me. You will need 1Nm (minimum) motors with low inductance ( 2-2.5 mH) and good screws with a pitch of approx. 3mm/turn.

Lucas thank you for reply.
I have manage to run X axis motor motors with chinese driver (3 axis blue one - ebay) with M8 on 800 mm/min, but Y was stacking and crying from begining. For Z I was satesfied with 400 mm/min. I have try to connect X to Y output, and Y to X output. Then something was burned inside driver. When I connect everything back, and jog X to lets say right, it starts to go right, then left, then stop, then right... (like dir impulse was messed up).

I will try to find screws with bigger pitch. And buy a decent driver. If motors will be to week, then I will replace them also (I realy want this cnc to get working ).
Here in Croatia I am very limited with material and tool choice. I was forced to invent moving parts design. You need to see z axis concept.. But at the end of the day it works. Mistake, it was working.
Please, can you advice me some good 3 axis mid range driver which will work with this motors and suitable power supply for it.

P.S.
I tried to get some work with old setup (chinese driver, this motors and M8 screws; router is Makita RT0700c) in mahogany. I was building 3d (side by side) wooden handle for my speargun. And I was very pleased with result but it took almost 3 hours to get finished (at 400 mm/minute). And I was milling 5 mm in pass.

Once again thank you so much.

[modric]

The motors you have are a bit weak, also their inductance is high (= no torque at high speed) and this will not allow you to achieve 800mm/min with M8 leadscrews.
You could try with ACME or trapezium style screws with have a higher pitch, but I'm afraid that those motors won't be strong enough to get decent results.
Been there, done that a long time ago and it didn't work for me. You will need 1Nm (minimum) motors with low inductance ( 2-2.5 mH) and good screws with a pitch of approx. 3mm/turn.

Spec says that this motor inductance is 2,3mH but holding torque 4,300g-cm (59.684 oz-in or 0.421658 Nm).

[lucas]

I just replied in another thread.

[gnu_B]

...Short story: the microstepping table is wrong, looks like 2 colums need to be swapped...

Lucas, you said that two of the microstepping columns need to be swapped, but you didn't say what the correct order should be... please clarify.

Also, you were observant and alerted us (in THIS post) to the fact there is a conflict in regards to the DIP Switch table on the plastic cover of the product, and the DIP Switch table on the web site. Clearly neither is completely correct, but which illustration has the DIP Switch for setting the current in the correct place?

Does the Chinese schematic you posted seem to be correct?

Thank you very much for your work,

gnu_B

[lucas]

Sorry for the late reply, have been absent for a while.

The drive cover is almost correct but the column under SW4 should be under SW5 and vice versa.
The drive documentation on the CD and Ebay pages is completely wrong.

But once again: DON'T BUY THESE !!!!!!!!!!!!
You will only get 30% of the potential power out of it.

I reverse engineered and made the schematic, I think it's correct, there is some circuitry for wich I don't have a clue for what it's supposed to do.

[gnu_B]

NOTE TO ADMIN: this is the second post to this forum. The first post was almost identical, but it never appeared in the thread...

...the microstepping table is wrong, looks like 2 colums need to be swapped...

Lucas, you said that "2 columns need to be swapped" but you didn't say how they should be swapped to read correctly. Please advise.

Best,

-gnu_B

[gnu_B]

...The drive cover is almost correct but the column under SW4 should be under SW5 and vice versa.
The drive documentation on the CD and Ebay pages is completely wrong...

OK, thanks for your information!

So if I have it right, the drive really is a piece of crap, AND the dust cover diagram and the web diagram should read like the image I have attached, right?

Attachment 196828

Best,

-gnu_B

[sswitaj]

It's kind of a shame. The Toshiba chips are really pretty good for what they are, but they get built into these poorly designed products and they almost inevitably fail.

My little company produces a product involving remote controlled cameras, and we have used - literally - thousands of the TB6560's in the SIP package in the past 4 years and have never had one go bad.

Then again, out product is designed with significant voltage and current margins, the outputs are well protected from transients, the chips are mechanically supported on a substantial heat-sink, and the power supply does not abuse them on start-up and shut-down.

A little bit of engineering makes all the difference.

[varunalau]

Someone kindly explain the connections of this driver board to a LPT breakout board

thank you

[Aaron5Bend]

Someone kindly explain the connections of this driver board to a LPT breakout boardhttp://jamie.ldmerritt.com/1.jpghttp://jamie.ldmerritt.com/2.jpghttp://jamie.ldmerritt.com/3.jpghttp://jamie.ldmerritt.com/4.jpghttp://jamie.ldmerritt.com/5.jpg

[doorknob]

If the driver board that you have is like this one:

NEW Product 4 5A TB6600 Stepper Motor Driver Board | eBay

Then the input terminals of the driver are marked like this:

DIR-, DIR+, CP-, CP+, EN-, EN+

Which means that you would interface the driver to a breakout board the same way that you would interface drivers such as the KL-4030 according to the diagram shown here:

http://www.automationtechnologiesinc...030WithC10.pdf

and described here:

http://www.automationtechnologiesinc...load.php?id=41

(where PUL- is the same as CP-, and PUL+ is the same as CP+)

[JohnMiller]

Hi ALL!
I'm a newby in CNC matters but with electronic experience. Is there any experience available with stepper driver mentioned above? I am willing to correct some items like mounting or changing some components or regarding swapped colums.

BTW: I found no final conclusion regarding Ratm or and Hyou being discusse din another thread.

I own a full functoning mill (X,Y,Z) - -mechanics only - and search for a set of 3 drivers in lower price area. TB6600 seems to be suitable for my motors. I figure to control drivers via Arduino / GRBL.

My obesrvations from pics posted:
- Compared to those blue 3/4 Channes Chineese boards tho driver above uses 6N137 optos being capable of transfering 10 MBit/s - that shall suffice :-).
- Theree is a third slow opto PC817. Seems they red data sheets and found reasonable conclusions :-)
- Those current resistors seem to own a parasitic inductance.
- Diodes are FR30? - can anybody confirm to be FR307 fast recovery ones?

Hint regarding parasitic diodes at output of driver FETs:
I red different discussions about their contribution to heat and loss. This is not the major item! Those internal diodes are quite slow, much slower than some inductive reactions of motors. (Some special , few makes of descrete FETs try to get them faster but not at driver ICs) The result could be that internal TB6600 FETs get high voltage spikes at source pin, while that lazy parasitic diode still did not decide to conduct current - but they are supposed to. I do not know how axactly those drivers will be controlled but the issue above might hold in case of decelleration. Therefore faster diodes are added externally for safety reasons. Now the question is: What type of diodes did our Chineese friends use at driver above?
I have a defective board out of the mill using FR307 diodes: 1000V / 3A fast recovery 500ns
rgds John

[JohnMiller]

New TB6600 driver board found along full documentation:
http://reprap.org/wiki/PiBot_TB6600_Stepper_Driver
http://reprap.org/mediawiki/images/0...Driver_sch.pdf
PiBot_stepper_driver_board
http://reprap.org/mediawiki/images/7...rDriverPCB.pdf
They violated 1mA outputs as well but some few mA only.
Are some comments on this product?
Thanks John

[jcsbanks]

Lucas, what do you think about shorting pins 3&4 to keep it at 100%?

I have my x and y axes on my 6040Z running these drivers as the ones supplied were missing steps, but whilst I connected the stepper drivers and empirically found the correct DIP switch settings for 1/8 microstep a few months ago, I have not had time to do any milling since except to test axis movement unloaded. Reading your info and examining my boards I suspect I will not be running full current to my steppers and wish to do so.

[lucas]

It should work and it's also very easy to implement.
Just watch the motor temperature as it will rise during standby.

It's obvious that you can read a schematic, do you have an explanation for the purpose of the transistor/resistor combo between the Enable and TQ pins?

[jcsbanks]

Thanks Lucas.

It is mystifying to me. Seems unnecessary duplication/pointless.

If China do really work on Quality Control and feedback/testing to correct mistakes and improve reputation instead of just the partial refund, they will step more on the toes of the West, but for now, the West has a few aces left? The time these corrections/investigations take is far more valuable than the cost of the drivers to each Western buyer that has to correct the mistakes. I wonder when this will really sink in?