Originally Posted by
hanermo
You are trying to do something very difficult .. and 99% of similar projects have given up.
It IS NOT easy to do smooth, accurate, motion control reliably, and with decent speeds and accuracies.
Each part of the equation, as you described, may be the problem, and probably is.
Good stepper drivers are not trivial.
Kit drivers, like yours, are .. and thus wont work "well". They will work ok, if very slow, and driven within their constraints and limits.
The 500 Hz speed limit is a clue.
I see, every day, about 20-50 similar ideas projects, everything from raspberry pi, to arduinos, to shields, to this to that.
Usually with the word "cheap" somewhere.
And, in 99% of cases, with no motion control experience.
My suggestion(s).
First, forget all kit drivers.
Use a 2M542 or xx542 series stepper driver, with any suitable motors.
Use a 24-48 v psu for them.
Second, forget anything usb and anything arduino.
Use any suitable environment with demonstrated numbers of users doing useful work WITH motion control, steppers, and with reliability and accuracy.
I am sorry for the negative tone, but..
Its not easy to re-do a whole motion control ecosystem.
The needed work is several thousands of hours, and several thousands of people have already done this with L3xx stepper drivers and kit drivers, from since 2002 onwards, usually with bad results.
There are endless numbers of real problems that you will encounter - many of which you will only encounter once you have already done a huge amount of work and its "almost working".
Example:
There are about 10-15 USB breakout boards for mach3. NONE of them work well and completely. Zero.
Some work ok, and do good useful work for not a lot of money.
Pokeys is one example.
It still has limitations, but is reliable and has an excellent motion control hardware engine.
It is about 3-5x better than the average products.
Ime.
It is very, very laborious to truly make a g-code engine.
All the breakout board makers have failed to do this truly well, all of them.