More than 4 stepper motors on CNC Shield / UNO?

Using Arduino General Electronics
1

Hello,

I am very new to Arduino and my electronical knowledge is not better than what I've been taught at school and my programming skills are Basic from C64 times. However I am eager to learn.

For a CNC projekt I installed an Arduino Uno with CNC Shield and 4 drivers (3 individual motors + 1 clone) for 3 axis. I want 2 X-, 2 Y and 1 Z stepper motor, each axis-motor running synchronous but opposite as they are mirrored on the opposite side of the axis. Or in other words, 2 motors at each end pushing the carriage.

Currently it works fine with 1 motor on each axis with some yet neglectable shearing strain. When I'll put some more weight on the mill carriage this strain for sure will be a problem, so I need another motor on the other side.

Question: From my basic knowledge it should work to just attach the second X-motor to the first X-motor's cabling, just the other way around to reverse it? And if so, what reason - other than convenience - exists to have a clone driver?

However 2 motors on one driver drain more Ampere than just one, not too much because the workload total is nearly the same -1 motor doing 100% vs 2 motors doing 50% (plus some losses.)

2

You can wire the motors in series for the same current (but lower top speed) this imposes less load
on the driver chip. Phasing can be reversed by reversing A pair for B pair, or swapping the A wires,
or swapping the B wires.

So to be clear, A winding on one motor in series with A winding on other, ditto for B windings.

3

great, thank you!