MACH3 is very a versatile CNC machine controller and it can be adapted to practically anything you can think of. For most people, however, it is all of this flexibility what makes it so daunting to give it a try.…
Category: Stepper Motors
A deep dive into steppers and their control.
Secrets of CNC Control Board Electronics
The CNC Mother Board is a one stop solution, housing the great majority of blocks you will need to put pretty much any CNC machine together. That is CNC routers or mills, CNC plasma cutters, CNC lathes, etc. In this…
The Singing Stepper: A DRV8818 Primer
The code for this project can be downloaded here: MIDI_2_STEPPER_MSP430F1612_10-25-2012 I am not the first one. Many more, and before me, have used a frequency signal to feed into a stepper driver which then in turns lets the stepper sing a…
How to Wire Your Stepper
You have a stepper motor and you are wondering how to wire it to your driver board. If you have a four lead motor, then that is plenty easy. But what if the motor has five, six or even eight…
How to Select the R and C at the RCx Pins on the DRV8811 Bipolar Stepper Driver
The DRV8811 is clearly a bipolar stepper driver that makes our lives considerably easier. It is just so simple to drive a stepper with this powerful device, as well as similar internal indexer microstepping engines, who takes care of all the nuances…
How to Get the 2.5A Out of your DRV8811 Bipolar Stepper Motor Driver
When I designed the AE-MDL-STPR1 I was naive enough to think that a two layer copper and 2″ by 2″ board should be a good platform to run the DRV8811 bipolar stepper motor driver at whatever current I could…
Taking Advantage of the DRV8811 Microstepping Driver
Driving a stepper motor has its advantages and its disadvantages. For example, there is no better way to control rotation speed and position than with a stepper. Sure, you may argue that Brushed and Brushless motors on servo systems are…
What is a Stepper Motor?
A stepper motor is a motor that moves in steps. Well, DUH! Isn’t that obvious? But it may not be. Because the notion of moving in steps is not as trivial as we may think. In fact, the ability to…
Connecting the AE-MDL-STPR1 Bipolar Stepper Motor Controller
If you have acquired or built one of my bipolar stepper motor drivers with up to 2.5A current capability and internal microstepping indexer, you could be asking, “How do I get this little guy started?” That is indeed a very…