Good day. I do hope I am at the right place for asking some newbie questions. I am busy building my second CNC machine, but with an added twist.
The first one was quite easy by copying from an original machine and it works like a charm, but new adding a new feature to he new machine, I am struggling with the wiring of the added feature.
On the new machine I have added an additional stepper motor and driver and do not know how to wire the additional ones. Upon reading many of the forums I see that you can run as many drivers from an Arduino Uno as you like (some mention from 16 to 3000), but I do not know how.
My setup is as follows:
Arduino Uno Card
TB 6600 x 4
Nema 23 Stepper motors (X axis, Z axis) x 3
Nema 17 Stepper motor (Y axis) x 1
Nema 23 stepper motor (A xis) x 1
I will be using OPENBUILDS control for the controlling of the machine.
Good day. I do hope I am at the right place for asking some newbie questions. I am busy building my second CNC machine, but with an added twist.
The first one was quite easy by copying from an original machine and it works like a charm, but new adding a new feature to he new machine, I am struggling with the wiring of the added feature.
On the new machine I have added an additional stepper motor and driver and do not know how to wire the additional ones. Upon reading many of the forums I see that you can run as many drivers from an Arduino Uno as you like (some mention from 16 to 3000), but I do not know how.
My setup is as follows:
Arduino Uno Card
TB 6600 x 4
Nema 23 Stepper motors (X axis, Z axis) x 3
Nema 17 Stepper motor (Y axis) x 1
Nema 23 stepper motor (A xis) x 1
I will be using OPENBUILDS control for the controlling of the machine.
Thank you for your feedback. So on the current wiring I have the following:
Y axis - 2 x Nema 23 stepper motors - one motor with reverse wiring - 1 TB6600 driver
X axis - 1 x Nema 23 stepper motor - 1 x TB 6600 driver
Z axis - 1 x Nema 17 stepper motor - 1 x TB 6600 driver
A axis - 1 x Nema 23 Stepper motor -
Thank you for your feedback. So on the current wiring I have the following:
Y axis - 2 x Nema 23 stepper motors - one motor with reverse wiring - 1 TB6600 driver
X axis - 1 x Nema 23 stepper motor - 1 x TB 6600 driver
Z axis - 1 x Nema 17 stepper motor - 1 x TB 6600 driver
A axis - 1 x Nema 23 Stepper motor - 1 x TB 6600 driver
The pictures are there to give an idea of what I am trying to achieve.
It's mostly a matter of what you want to connect to the Arduino and how many pins you need. The Arduino UNO has 20 I/O pins. You need 2 pins (Step. Direction) or 3 pin (Step, Direction, Enable) per stepper driver. You can have 6 or 10 steppers without additional hardware... if you don't need any other I/O.
Did you want limit switches? Those can be separate (one pin each) or daisychained (one pin for all).
Did you want serial communication with a PC? That's two pins.
Did you want any other I/O? Maybe a way to turn a spindle on and off?
Good morning John!
Thank you for the advice. I will not be making use of limit switches and the comms with a PC will be done via the USB port.
I know that I sound a bit dumb, and so be it! This is only my second time fiddling with this kind of equipment.
So I basically just need to figure out where to add the additional stepper driver on the Arduino Uno card.
I will post a picture of my current wiring on the first machine.
Pins 0 and 1 are used for serial communication. The includes program upload. Do not use those pins for anything else.
Photos are fine, but to advise what pins to use, we need a schematic.
Really, any free pins can be used (except 0 and 1) even the analog inputs (A0-A5 or pins 14 - 19) The analog inputs are actually digital pins with analog input as a special function so can be used to control steppers (step, dir and enable) if necessary.
