Thinking about a 5i25 board only

This is pretty typical of step motors driven past their torque limits

This why I asked about the lead pitch and step drive ustep ratio
( To see if the parallel port step rate is likely to a limiting factor )

also what is you power supply voltage?

I just looked up the datasheet for the TB6560, which is the chip that my drivers are based upon. It has a maximum clock rate of 15KHz. Compared to a maximum rate of 300KHz for a Leadshine driver. think I will get some drivers that are based on the TB6600. It has a max clock rate of 200KHz. Maybe I need to give that a try.

I have been taking a look at other drivers such as Leadshine and Wantai. They sure do look similar. Same specs and part numbers and everything. I wonder who -actually- makes them. Specifically, I am looking at the Wantai M542MA. here

edit: I failed to mention that Wantai is 1/2 the price of Leadshine.

PCW wrote:

This is pretty typical of step motors driven past their torque limits

This why I asked about the lead pitch and step drive ustep ratio
( To see if the parallel port step rate is likely to a limiting factor )

also what is you power supply voltage?

The lead pitch is 4mm/rev and the screws are ball screws, not Acme. The supply is 24V. I have is set for 1/8 steps. It seems as though there is plenty of torque to drive it. It will absolutely break off a 1/4" end mill if I bury it.

Ya, know what, You are right. I set the step rate to 50nS and that worked just fine, but it only boosted the speed to 65mm/S (actually 67.62). So I reset it back to 1000nS and 55mm/S and I will just use it that way. It's really only the G00 moves that are affected anyhow. It really can run for hours without missing steps or whatever.

I have enough spare parts to build a whole box just like the one that came with the machine, maybe a little better. I guess I am just going to go with what I have and use those parts to build a 3D printer.

Thanks for the input. It's been very helpful. I did not really know how what my expectations ought to be.

Thanks! Nice machines. I "liked" the FB page.

I had thought of building a plasma table, but I think I will get more use out of a 3D printer. I want to do aluminum castings and I will use the printer to make positives.

For what it's worth, I bought some of these . I tried them out and they work great for 2A motors.

I turned up all of the parameters in stepconfig to be as fast as they will go for the max latency that I have and it still seems to work just fine. I can probably benefit from getting something like a mesa 7i92. As I said earlier, it probably does not matter if I make the machine go faster, but being able to get rid of the parallel port would be a big plus.