[williamchill]

Just ordered a Smoothie board on Kickstarter and I don't know what to do next so I thought I'd do some research here.

Any pointers most welcome, I'd like to make a ply wood laser cutter that can cut a full sheet 120cm x 240cm and 15mm thick, but I fear it may be a bit ambitious for a first project!

Will

[doorknob]

It does sound like you are going at it backwards by choosing the motion controller first before you even have the machine designed.

That said, I suppose that you could back into it.

The Smoothieboard can handle up to 24 volts at 2 amps for each of the stepper motors. So when you go shopping for stepper motors you should make sure that they will work OK within those parameters. But normally you would want to choose a machine design first, then figure out what motors would be required, and then choose the motor drivers.

You may want to look at some other laser cutter builds (on this site as well as elsewhere), find one that looks like it would be a good one to emulate, and then determine what motors would be needed, and make sure that they will work with the Smoothieboard.

[williamchill]

Yeah your right, I got all excited late at night about the smoothie board on Kickstarter and before i knew it I had ordered it!

I'm going to have to work around it, at least its 1 constraint the project has!

Thank you for your kind advice and encouragement!

[arthurwolf]

Hey.

You can use external stepper motor drivers with the Smoothieboard, there are easy connectors for it, so any size stepper motor should be no problem.

Cheers