[Tristar500]

Hi everybody,
I'm pretty familiar with stepper motors and drives having built many different machines over the years.

I'm working on a moving sculpture project and am trying to figure out how I could control say 10 steppers from a laptop PC.

Any Ideas?
The motion I'll be asking of the steppers will be pretty basic.
I'm guessing I'll need:
steppers motors
A drive for each or a Multi-drive (s) to accommodate the steppers
Some sort of software that will send step and dir signals to each drive.

Any help is much appreciated!!

[awerby]

The most I've seen a breakout board control is 5 axes. Maybe you could gang up two of them. But you'd still need a separate driver for each motor. If the motion you need is pretty basic, maybe a different kind of motor that's easier to run would work. If you had ten regular DC gearmotors, for instance, connected to a breadboard, it would be pretty simple to give them on and off signals to roughly control the motion of your sculpture.

[Tristar500]

The most I've seen a breakout board control is 5 axes. Maybe you could gang up two of them. But you'd still need a separate driver for each motor. If the motion you need is pretty basic, maybe a different kind of motor that's easier to run would work. If you had ten regular DC gearmotors, for instance, connected to a breadboard, it would be pretty simple to give them on and off signals to roughly control the motion of your sculpture.

Interesting idea. I've become so accustomed to working with Steppers I hadn't thought of this. I'm not sure I would be able to get coordinated movement with gear motors but I can certainly see the benefits of the simplicity.
Any off the shelf BOB that I could control a bank of SS relays with? Software?
USB would be nice since parallel ports are going the way of the dodo.

[pippin88]

Is the motion fixed / always the same? Or will you change programs?

Could do with an arduino / microcontroller (or multiple) if you don't need to change the program. Also possible to change program with an SD card etc but a bit more work

[Tristar500]

I found this on Amazon.8-Channel 12V Computer USB Control Switch Relay Module Drive-Free Relay Module Plug and Play Suitable for PC Smart Controller.

Does anybody know how to setup a PC to turn relays off and on at different times and durations?

https://www.amazon.com/NOYITO-8-Chan...80&sr=8-7&th=1

[RaderSidetrack]

If you were prepared to use Raspberry Pi and the GPIO [output] pins you could control more than 10 relays.
https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/...al-computing/1
Using this approach, you'd probably need to do some Python or C programming.

Also, you might find this interesting: https://pirelay.jasonfindlay.com/

[peteeng]

Hi Tristar - Look at Duet3d systems. They are modular and can run as many as you like. Peter

https://www.duet3d.com/

Big Tree tech have boards with 8 drives, but I'd probably go duet, very good systems.

https://biqu.equipment/en-au/collect...e-five-motors?

[Tristar500]

Thanks for all the helpful everybody!
I could use the relay approach but I won't be able to control motor velocity with the simple relay.
I think I'd use the relay system on another sculpture so long as I can get a PC, PLC, etc to run a routine.
I'd like to be able to do something like this but on a much smaller scale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlx-M53dC7M

[peteeng]

Hi Tri500 - I think you'll need to look at rhino and grasshopper to generate the point data. But once the point data is known the control side is straight fwd...Peter

[Toinvd]

Planet cnc still has the 9 axis controller. If that's enough, you can use it easy with normal Gcodes axis XYZABCUVW.
I use an old one already for year, but I only have four axis on my mill