I am currently working on the 3D printer project which should have three separate stepper motor groups. To be more specific, each group should be independent and should have four stepper motors plus a heated bed. Which leads to the question, is it possible to run those groups independently just with one Arduino mega board? Also should take into consideration what is the maximum power which Arduino can receive and control? Usually, 3D printers are using 400W power supply but because of three heated beds, I would need at least 800W. So if such a thing is possible to do, what will I need to do it?
The Mega does not supply power to the motors nor beds. The Mega can send control signals to transistors or motor controllers that then supply power to the devices.
Each group would use 9 pins. 4 step pins, 4 dir pins and one pin for bed heater control. So for 3 groups, 27 pins. Mega has enough pins.
harry93:
I am currently working on the 3D printer project which should have three separate stepper motor groups.
Your Title refers to servo groups - a very different thing. If you edit your Original Post you can correct the title.
If you mean that you want to run 3 independent separate 3D printers each with 4 motors (i.e. a total of 12 separate motors) from a single Mega then I suspect you will find it does not perform fast enough.
If the idea is to have 3 separate 3D printers with each building the exact same item so that (in theory) the Mega thinks it is just controlling a single printer then my guess is that there is a significant risk of the printers getting out of sync and making a mess. I can't see any advantage in trying to save the small cost of a separate Mega for each printer.
If u meant servo motors then my upcoming board is capable of doing that. Within a month should be available on tindie just waiting for last revision to arrive to check.
3 input pins and 8 outputs full control over 8 loads up to 1.25A each. And independent control of each output pwm (u can rotate each servo to any direction without polling).