connecting second z-stepper-motor

Hi all!

I'm a bit of a newbie, been printing for a while, then my board stopped working. So I replaced my Arduino 2560 + Ramps 1.4 Shield for this MKS, and of course I need to install Marlin on it. Now most of it is working fine, but one thing I have difficulty with: the old Ramps had 2 x 4 pins next to the Z-stepper-driver, because the z-movement uses 2 stepper motors. But this MKS board only has 1 x 4 pins for the z-stepper-motor. (see picture, circled in red) Those work fine, but I need another 1 x 4 pins that do exactly the same. Can I now in the firmware designate the other 4 pins (circled in blue) to copy the behaviour from the original z-stepper pins? If yes, please tell me how, although I'm not a programmer, I know the basics of coding, just not enough to figure it out myself.




Hope someone can help, and thanks!

The "Blue" pins are the control lines into the stepper driver, ie step direction enable and gnd.

You cannot directly plug a second stepper motor in there.

Are you using both E0 and E1? if not you can just plug the second Z into E1 and update your firmware

see Configuration_adv.h

// A single Z stepper driver is usually used to drive 2 stepper motors.
// Uncomment this option to use a separate stepper driver for each Z axis motor.
// The next unused E driver will be assigned to the second Z stepper.
//#define Z_DUAL_STEPPER_DRIVERS

Hi Dust!

Thanks a lot for your reply! I have tried that, and it doesn't work. I assume the reason for why it doesn't work is that I have 2 z stepper motors, but not 2 z stepper motor drivers. And i wouldn't need 2 z stepper motor drivers, because i want them to do exactly the same... So would you be able to think of a way to copy the z pins to 4 other pins, on which i can connect the second z stepper motor?

Why don't you solder the two steppers together? Parallel connection would be the easiest, but series connection is better for the driver.

Parallel:
black to black
green to green
etc...

Series:
black1 to green2
green1 to driver_pin2

black2 to driver_pin1

blue1 to red2
red1 to driver_pin4

blue2 to driver_pin3