Need help with this design Arduino / SN74HC595 / A4988 / NEMA17

Using Arduino Project Guidance
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Hi,

I am working or a project to drive clusters of 8 Nema17 stepper motors with Arduino using A4988 drivers and some 8 bit shift registers.

Each cluster consist of:

  1. power 12V 11A supply
  2. DCDC stepdown voltage converter to 5V
  3. 8x NEMA17 stepper motors
  4. 8x A4988 stepper driver
  5. 8x end stopper switches
  6. 2x SN74HC595N shift registers (splitting signal for motors)
  7. 1x SN74HC165N shift register (gathering analog signals from end stoppers)

I want to connect multiple clusters in series so that shift registers work in serial daisy chain and each cluster has its own power supply to power 8 motors.

Each cluster is located around 2m distance from another.

I have very little knowledge of electrical engineering but really need to make this work.

I already tested 1 cluster connected directly to Arduino and it works, but having problems now with multiple clusters.

I am guessing having common ground will be one problem. another would be signal distortion distortion between daisy chained shift registers. At this point I am just guessing, was trying to add some small resistors at the signal pin pf shift registers but tbh I don't know what I am doing...

Never before drew a electrical circuit but did my best to show the wiring.

Any help highly appreciated :slight_smile:

Thank you,
Mariusz

2

Use one point as GND. Pull all gnd cables to that pont. The same applies to 5 volt.
Keep the signal wires short.

3

What do you want these motors to do.
Stepper code, like Accelstepper, can only generate 4000 steps/sec on a common Arduino.
You are going to divide that across how many stepper motors?

Shouldn't you be using one Arduino per cluster, and connect via WiFi or serial.
An ESP32 with ESPNow seems a good choice. That could also eliminate some/all of those shift registers.
Leo..

4

Hi Wawa,

Thanks for the comment. Can EXP32 run Arduino code?

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Yes. You need to install a core to do so. >> GitHub - espressif/arduino-esp32: Arduino core for the ESP32

Installation instuctions. >> Installing — Arduino-ESP32 2.0.14 documentation

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