Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

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bighatbbq
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Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

Post by bighatbbq »

I believe I've received my second bad board from this company through Amazon. Is there a site to purchase these ? My Y moves fine but X and Z lock up, buzz and hesitate and not move all together eventually. I am brand new to this hobby and have yet to get one thing cut due to what I believe is the board failure.

4 Axis TB6560 Nema23 Stepper Motor Driver Board CNC Controller Breakout Board 4V Type For CNC

https://www.amazon.com/Stepper-Motor-Co ... axis+board
tcaudle
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Re: Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

Post by tcaudle »

Go on Ebay. YOu can find the TBA6560 cards . They all come out of China and they all are wretched drivers. I don't know what your time and frustration is worth but if its at least $300 bucks then consider the Gecko G540.
AdrianH
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Re: Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

Post by AdrianH »

What is your plasma cutter, what make and model?

Do the board work until you strike up the arc? and then from that point on you loose an axis or two?

Adrian
Rodw
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Re: Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

Post by Rodw »

I've had good results with Longs motors DM542AA drivers on NEMA23's and smaller NEMA34's
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Nema23-Stepper ... SwQM9UZBz8
sphurley
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Re: Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

Post by sphurley »

The DM542 is a driver only board. He has a breakout and 4 drivers on one card. The G540 or a Leadshine are a better way to go.
Steve
Platform CNC Plasma table
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bighatbbq
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Re: Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

Post by bighatbbq »

[quote="AdrianH"]What is your plasma cutter, what make and model?

Do the board work until you strike up the arc? and then from that point on you loose an axis or two?

It is a SwiftCut 5x8 table with an Everlast 50amp cutter on it. YES it runs the program fine until we add the cutter and it fires up and then we lose X and Z.
AdrianH
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Re: Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

Post by AdrianH »

Is it a blow-back start or an earlier HF start plasma, they may still have pilot but I am not sure how they start the arc?

The reason I ask is I am wondering if you have an earthing or filtering issue with the table. I built a hobby cnc with a HF start machine and even though it now has pilot fitted the HF start can rip through driver chips if it is not filtered out from getting back to the board and computer. I went through 9 Toshiba devices before the penny dropped, it works now for me but I added filters caps/diodes to the stepper cables, used good screened cables etc. I personally believe the bob/driver boards are fine for router and mill systems but may be a bit lacking with plasma.
HF can generate 10,000 Volts plus even if this only for a few milli seconds it can and will do damage to electronics.

If these gecko boards have extra filtering and protection built in I do not know.

Adrian
bighatbbq
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Re: Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

Post by bighatbbq »

Can you give me a better description of what type of filter/caps/diodes I might need. Do you have any part number or description or photos ? Mouser Electronics here in town carries anything and everything I might need and I've spoken with them but they are asking for specifics.
AdrianH
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Re: Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

Post by AdrianH »

Hi bighatbbq, sorry do not know your name.

I can not say what worked for me will work for you, a lot depends on your set-up and how the HF if it is is getting into things. Or even if your machine is a HF start or not.

I did a sort of blog if you will as I went along you can find the history here:
http://www.tamarisktechnicals.com/pages/CNCPlasma.html
On that page I have provided simple diagrams a video link to my youtube channel.

My filters basically consisted of 1nF caps at around 400 Volts rating and some zener diodes at 27Volts in series with one reversed, so the diodes gave a clamping voltage of 27.6 Volts and the caps helped with transient spikes. These made it better, but I also had to remove earth braiding I had placed between table and control box, I still have it between the Plasma case and control box, I created a sort of earth loop (I think). Also note my PSU to drive the steppers was 24 Volts not higher.

So may wish to try it and see if it helps, I will give no promises it will work, but building ones own machines as I found out can be a trial and error journey.

Adrian
bighatbbq
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Re: Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

Post by bighatbbq »

We returned the Everlast we were originally told would work with our setup. We purchased the Everlast 60S CNC compatible version and have not had a problem since. The Blowback Start Technology wich eliminates the need for high frequency starts makes all the filtering grounding etc. unnecessary. If the company had just suggested the proper cutter we would have been up and running the same day as opposed to a month down the road. We should have also done more homework on our end and not just trusted the suggestion provided.
AdrianH
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Re: Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

Post by AdrianH »

So it was a HF start issue and not the driver boards. I believe Blowback is used on the Hypertherm CNC machines so no HF start on them.

Wish you good prospects now you have it all going.

Adrian
Rodw
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Re: Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

Post by Rodw »

bighatbbq wrote:We purchased the Everlast 60S CNC compatible version and have not had a problem since. The Blowback Start Technology which eliminates the need for high frequency starts makes all the filtering grounding etc. unnecessary.
There are 2 things that might catch you out with the Everlast based on my experience with the 50 amp one.

1. The voltage divider board's resistor network could be seen as an extension of your THC's voltage divider network changing the effective divider value. I posted a thread about this here http://www.plasmaspider.com/viewtopic.php?f=111&t=23700

2. The internal relay used for ArcOK has a minimum current requirement. If it is feeding a low impedance digital input, the contactors can oxidise and operation becomes intermittent becasue there is not enough current flowing to plough through the oxidisation on the contacts. I got caught with this and in this world of digital circuits, not many people know of this issue but it was isolated by a couple of silver haired guys on my CNC advisory panel that cut their teeth with analog circuits. In my case with 24 volt electronics, the solution was to add a 1W 1k pulldown resistor on the digital input.
tcaudle
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Re: Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

Post by tcaudle »

The higher the Independence the less current flows. Putting in a loading resistor lowers the impedance and thus increases current flow. I doubt 24ma is neededto "break" the oxide. The oxide block comes when there is virtually no or very little current flows. It depends on the contact metal type with gold and silver not having a problem with higher resistance oxide. The Minimum Contact Current of a relay is to assure that the stated contact resistance is maintained. in short it says you have to pass that amount of current if you want the contact resistance to be at the fractional ohms on the spec sheet over time. Analog signals really need to be switched across a semiconductor with a constant impedance. 24V through 1K produces .6 watts for power . a 2K produces about 12 ma (enough to light a conventional LED) and only dissipates about .3W and gives you a valid indication its working. to get more precise the LED in series with a 2K dissipates about .1 w of the total .3.
Rodw
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Re: Where do you buy motor driver boards ?

Post by Rodw »

tcaudle wrote:The higher the Independence the less current flows. Putting in a loading resistor lowers the impedance and thus increases current flow. I doubt 24ma is needed to "break" the oxide. The oxide block comes when there is virtually no or very little current flows. It depends on the contact metal type with gold and silver not having a problem with higher resistance oxide. The Minimum Contact Current of a relay is to assure that the stated contact resistance is maintained. in short it says you have to pass that amount of current if you want the contact resistance to be at the fractional ohms on the spec sheet over time. Analog signals really need to be switched across a semiconductor with a constant impedance. 24V through 1K produces .6 watts for power . a 2K produces about 12 ma (enough to light a conventional LED) and only dissipates about .3W and gives you a valid indication its working. to get more precise the LED in series with a 2K dissipates about .1 w of the total .3.
Tom, thanks, I did manage to track down the data sheet for the relay used by Everlast. I dug up my notes. The minimum current for the Arc OK relay is 100 mA. The input is on a mesa card. Their manual states "The 7I76E field inputs have a nominal input resistance of 10K Ohms to field power ground."

Smarter minds than me worked through the maths and while initially we were going to use a 220 Ohm resistor but then decided it would need to handle about 3W which was not easy to find so we settled on a 1k resistor which as you say produced a wetting current of 24 mA. The resistor value would obviously be dependent on the hardware the input is attached to.

The frustrating thing about this was it worked perfectly for a while then became intermittent after the oxide built up.

Anyway, its something to be aware of with Everlast plasmas.
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