I am making a rotary table indexer for my milling machine (this is not a maker type, wood and plastic machine, it is a proper metal cutting engineering type machine).
Up to now, I have been developing software on the bench with a NEMA 17 and an A4988 driver, but, the final hardware will require a NEMA 23 motor in the 2.5 to 2.8 amps per phase range.
One requirement of the system is that I need fairly high speed and accurate positioning for indexing (using 1/4 step) and a lower speed with smoothest possible motion for feeding during milling operations (using 1/8 step). For this purpose, I have developed a program that switches microstepping from the arduino to the MS1, MS2 inputs on the driver according to the mode I am working in.
So far so good, but now I am looking for actual project hardware and the driver looks like it is going to be an issue. From my research so far I have found;
- Smaller drivers up to around 2A can be switched as per my test rig by sending a signal to the driver MS pins.
- Larger drivers of 3A capacity seem to be only switchable by DIP switches.
So , does anyone know of a 3 amp class driver that has the necessary input pins?
Or, does anyone have any experience with bridging the DIP switches with outputs from the Arduino?
Thanks in advance.