Hello! We are trying to control steppers in 6 axes with one or more Arduinos (optimally one).
We’ve already unsuccessfully tried using the Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino (it didn’t move quickly enough for our purposes).
Right now, we're looking into using multiple Pololu A4988 stepper drivers. There are several CNC shields which use multiple axes and interface with an Arduino for this purpose, which we have been considering.
Does anyone have recommendations for multi-axis control? For example, have you had success with any shields in particular? Are there other stepper drivers which would work better?
6 steppers is a lot. A typical 3D printer has 4 and there's a couple of extra controls for the bed heater or a fan. This is too many pins for an UNO, so the usual choice is a MEGA. With 6, I'd consider going to a faster Arduino such as a Due or Teensy.
As for boards, look at a RAMPS board. It's based on the MEGA and I know it does at least 5 steppers; I'm not sure about 6.
Figure two or three pins per stepper driver: Step, Direction, and optionally Enable. That would be 18 pins maximum, within the capability of the Arduino UNO. Was there anything else you needed attached to your Arduino? If so you might be able to run all of the Enables off one output (13 pins needed) and possibly use one Direction pin (7 pins needed) at the sacrifice of some speed (need to set the Direction pin for every step).
CellScale_:
Hello! We are trying to control steppers in 6 axes with one or more Arduinos (optimally one).
We’ve already unsuccessfully tried using the Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino (it didn’t move quickly enough for our purposes).
Right now, we're looking into using multiple Pololu A4988 stepper drivers. There are several CNC shields which use multiple axes and interface with an Arduino for this purpose, which we have been considering.
Does anyone have recommendations for multi-axis control? For example, have you had success with any shields in particular? Are there other stepper drivers which would work better?
Thank you!
How Quick is not quickly enough, in inch's or mm's per minute?
Did the motors need to be mapped to the driver?
How free are the axis?
Without seeing the datasheet for the stepper motors it is impossible to suggest a suitable stepper driver. However most stepper drivers need step an direction inputs. In many cases the Enable can be hard wired to always-on.
As others have hinted at the most likely shortcoming with a 16MHz Arduino will be its inability to produce step pulses at a high enough frequency if all the motors must operate at high speed at the same time.
We are now looking at using either RADDS or RAMBo as they both accommodate 6 stepper motors (RAMPS-FD appears to be poorly-supported). Does anyone have recommendations regarding these?