Highend driver on lowend board

Hi,

I've been seeing more and more reports about a new generation of drivers (eg.Watterott Silent step stick and also real allegros) and as someone who has been buying china quality I'm wondering if it would be a waste to use high quality drivers on my cheap Ramps.

Especially now that Im building a delta and will need a bit more processing power buying higher quality driver instead of an expensive controller seems a reasonable alternative.

Cheers

Yes is would be a waste IMO. However, there are different sorts of stepstick available, including cheap 2 layer ones using the A4988 chip, 4 layer ones using the A4982 which can take more current before they overheat, and DRV8825 ones that can cope with even more current. Whether you need the more expensive ones depends on how much current your stepper motors need.

It's possible to run a delta on Arduino/RAMPS (just), but I recommend a 32-bit board. My preference is for the Duet because it costs less than the Smoothie and has a much better web interface. Its main limitation is that it needs an add on board if you want to drive a second extruder. If you are on a tight budget, you could consider the AZSMZ Mini, but it lacks Ethernet.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Never heard of the AZSMZ Mini but looks interesting and priced right for its capabilities.

I doubt that I will need more than 1.5A maybe for the extruder but it makes sense to only put newer drivers on newer boards.

Its interesting though that there isnt a middle segment for controllery beyond 20mhz.

Edit: I just came across the Due +Ramps FD topic so I guess that solves most problems.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/22/2015 09:03PM by sungod3k.

Due + RAMPS-FD doesn't have Ethernet. I cannot understand why the Arduino Due was designed around a high end chip with built in Ethernet, but the Ethernet bits were left out. A Duet will probably cost less (it has the stepper drivers on the board) and does provide an Ethernet interface. It also runs better firmware (ok I'm biased because I have contributed a lot to it, but it's true).

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Quote
sungod3k
I've been seeing more and more reports about a new generation of drivers (eg.Watterott Silent step stick and also real allegros) and as someone who has been buying china quality I'm wondering if it would be a waste to use high quality drivers on my cheap Ramps.

Stepper driver and processor are two different things. It's entirely fine to connect high end stepper drivers to a "low" end board. You get stronger steppers, processing power stays the same. Entirely fine for carthesian printer frames.

On the other side, getting a faster processor won't give you any additional motor torque when keeping the same drivers.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

P.S.: it's also possible to mix stepper dirvers on a board. For example the "silent" ones on X and Y, keeping the cheap ones on Z (rarely used) and E (torque requirement).

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

... I'm sometimes intermixing different motor-driver combos with the same controller - common stepper-drivers, high-quality stepper drivers+motors (325VDC, 10Nm torque) and DC-servo-motors with a STEP/DIR interface ... and all driven either by a RAMPS with RepRap-frimware, a DIY-STM32-board with comercial firmware or by a comercial CNC-controller with DIY-software

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

A word of caution about putting more expensive drivers on Arduino/RAMPS. Putting higher-current drivers on it is fine, as I tried to explain in my earlier post. However, some of the more expensive drivers support higher microstepping rates as well. You may not be able to achieve the higher microstepping rates on an Arduino/RAMPS setup, because higher microstepping needs more processing power to generate the higher step rates.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

... yes, the limits I'm receiving with common RepRap-controllers (and many comercial boards too) are around 100kHz clocking speeds ... some more expensive (4k€!) comercial boards supports until 2MHz clocking speed (I have some stepper-drivers, that can work with up to 10MHz) -- but I have found some cheaper ones (300€) with 500kHz bandwith, what's good enough for some applications too

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/23/2015 11:09AM by VDX.

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Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]