Stepper Motor Driver

[SignTorch]

Originally the pee-cam Z motor had only 3 wires connected - the 4th wire was there - it worked like a conventional stepper - but weak and slow

The 3 wire drive is a cross between standard brushless and standard stepper motor drives - I assume that is used to detect when the Z axis stalls in the absence of limit switches on the Z axis

At any rate - everything about the Z axis is junk - has lots of play in the v-groove bearings - so I recommend replacing the Z axis altogether - I ended up with a tiny servo, ball screw, linear rail and that now out performs the X and Y axis

See this youtube video at the 1 minute mark

For the Z axis, I'm using a standard Gecko stepper driver - http://www.geckodrive.com/geckodrive-step-motor-drives/g213v.html for $166.00 - one required



This is a standard bipolar microstepping driver with same voltage characteristics as the servo drives.


Note: the plasmacam Z axis is kinda lame - it's weak and slow compared to XY axii, and the slide leaves a lot to be desired

I recommend to just replace the Z axis with a small servo and precision actuator so as to not be limited by that stepper motor Z axis - keep reading...

 

[SignTorch]

this is the way to go - tiny servo and lightweight slide

showing 400 ipm velocity and 200 ipss acceleration