Stepper Motor Controller

Thread Starter

awwende

Joined Feb 17, 2009
39
I'm working on a desktop CNC mill for my engineering club. We were able to get a hold of a schematic for a single motor and planned to dupicate the circuit for each of the 3 axis. the schematic looks like this:



according to the instructable it's attached to a parallel port, does anyone know how I would connect it?

the link to the actual project is http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-to-build-CNC-Mill-Stepper-Motor-and-Driver-ci/

second option is just buying the motor controller. I found a 3 axis on ebay for a little over 70 bucks, is there anything out there that's cheaper?
 

BMorse

Joined Sep 26, 2009
2,675
These are the standard connections of stepper controllers to a parallel port, this includes all 3 axis' and other controls.....

Parallel Port Pin Functions using port &H378
Pin/ I/O/ ADDRESS/ BIT/ STATE/ STEPPER CONTROLS

1 O &H37A 0 INVERTED SPINDLE RELAY
2 O &H378 0 NORMAL X-STEP
3 O &H378 1 NORMAL X-DIR
4 O &H378 2 NORMAL X-ENABLE
5 O &H378 3 NORMAL Y-STEP
6 O &H378 4 NORMAL Y-DIR
7 O &H378 5 NORMAL Y-ENABLE
8 O &H378 6 NORMAL Z-STEP
9 O &H378 7 NORMAL Z-DIR
10 I &H379 6 NORMAL NU
11 I &H379 7 INVERTED X-HOME SWITCH
12 I &H379 5 NORMAL Y-HOME SWITCH
13 I &H379 4 NORMAL Z-HOME SWITCH
14 O &H37A 1 INVERTED Z-ENABLE
15 I &H379 3 NORMAL NU
16 O &H37A 2 NORMAL M CODE FUNCTION
17 O &H37A 3 INVERTED M CODE FUNCTION
18-25 GROUND
you can go here to check out my Home made CNC PCB Mill/Drill that is made entirely from salvaged or used parts, including all components on the stepper driver boards...:D >> http://www.morse-code.com/id18.htm
 
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THE_RB

Joined Feb 11, 2008
5,438
I'm impressed with your home made CNC setup Brent. Actually your whole site is impressive, not that i'm into PC modding or anything but that NEON PC you made is very cool too. :)
 

BMorse

Joined Sep 26, 2009
2,675
I'm impressed with your home made CNC setup Brent. Actually your whole site is impressive, not that i'm into PC modding or anything but that NEON PC you made is very cool too. :)
Thanks for the compliments ;) ... I haven't had much time lately to update my site (I think I spend too much of it here! :p )but hopefully this weekend I can update it and add few more projects I had been working on.....

The NEON PC mod was for an Intel computer Mod competition on Youtube a couple of years ago....
My .02
 

BMorse

Joined Sep 26, 2009
2,675
that's a lot of help, thanks. How would I hook up pins 11-17 on the board?

You wouldn't connect those to the Driver board, those would come in to the printer port off of their own circuits.....

except for pin 14 which is the enable line for the Z axis, but if you are only using 2 axis' then you would not need to connect that at all ....

the only connections on your driver board that gets connected to the printer port are the DIR,ENABLE, and STEP.... you would connect these to the port to correspond to which motor you are controlling for that axis.... so for X axis you would connect to pins # 2,3,4 of the printer port, for the Y axis it would be pins # 5,6,7, and for the Z it would be pins #8,9,14....

The X,Y,Z, limit switches are exactly as it indicates, these are switches you would have to put on the machine so it knows when it has reached the starting limit for each axis.... Most CNC machines only employ home switches, they do not use end switches since the machine "knows" how many steps to take before reaching the end once it starts out from home.......

Pin # 1 on the printer port would control the On/Off function of the spindle motor so the CNC can start and stop it when needed.... the other MCODE pins are used if you have fluids to control during cutting and other machine dependant controls....


My .02
 

BMorse

Joined Sep 26, 2009
2,675
I wish to post also my compliments for your home made CNC setup seen at your site. May I ask you which kind of software are you using for engraving your PCB?

Alberto.
Thanks for the compliments Alberto....
I use several, but the one I use the most is KCAM by Kellyware..... It is good enough to be doing 2D stuff such as PCB's...... Here is a small 16 Lead QFN package that I milled on it, pretty accurate down to about 5000th of an inch.... the only thing is finding milling bits that small with an 1/8" shank ( I buy lots of refurbished ones from Harbor Freight though....)

 
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Thread Starter

awwende

Joined Feb 17, 2009
39
thank you very much, you've been a lot of help. what program do you use to upload the pcb gcode to kcam? I like to use pcb express what i do my toner transer is there a way i could upload that to kcam or what other programs are out there that are similar and relatively user friendly/easy to learn to send to kcam?

thanks
 

BMorse

Joined Sep 26, 2009
2,675
thank you very much, you've been a lot of help. what program do you use to upload the pcb gcode to kcam? I like to use pcb express what i do my toner transer is there a way i could upload that to kcam or what other programs are out there that are similar and relatively user friendly/easy to learn to send to kcam?

thanks

You will basically have to create a DXF or NC file for your board and import it into KCam (you can not do this in PCBExpress...). I use Eagle Cad Lite to make the schematics and PCB's then I use the pcb-gcode.ulp to convert my PCB design to an NC file for Kcam to be able to process...... the pcb-gcode.ulp will create the top and bottom milling file and the top and bottom drill file also.....


My .02
 
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Thread Starter

awwende

Joined Feb 17, 2009
39
I got the parts for the controller in the schematic i posted in my thread. We don't have any of the software installed but i want to by able to test my circuit before I fabricated a PCB. what voltage does a parallel port put out? also should i hook it up to a wave generator and use a squarewave at that voltage?
 

BMorse

Joined Sep 26, 2009
2,675
I got the parts for the controller in the schematic i posted in my thread. We don't have any of the software installed but i want to by able to test my circuit before I fabricated a PCB. what voltage does a parallel port put out? also should i hook it up to a wave generator and use a squarewave at that voltage?
The parallel port uses 5 volt logic signals, you can use a wave generator to generate the step pulses, but start at a low frequency (10 hz) and ramp up the speed.
 
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