Okay I hear what you are saying, I think I was side tracked here perhaps, I was following a thred from some guys blog and understood he did his milling machine this way.I know some folks use an Arduino running a gcode interpreter to drive their mills but personally I think they're making hard work of it. Why would you do that when far superior PC based software like Mach/LinuxCNC is available? anyway - each to their own.
So I have 3 x sparkfun easydriver boards and 3 x stepper motors, I will attempt to run the sparkfun stepper motor boards directly of the Parallel port instead of the Arduino board, there should be enough juice from the Parallel port.Easydriver inputs, Arduino inputs/outputs, Parallel port's inputs/outputs - all TTL and similar current sourcing/sinking specs. You'll be fine.
Thank you Stirling, you have been a great help "eye openner" and I very much appreciate your help.No probs - have fun.
Wow as a moderator you are a really helpfull guy
But now I can not get the motors to run properly, they run very strong and very slow. Using theSo by running "properly" you mean you'd like them to run faster?
- easydriver from Spark fun and
- motors are 0686A 12V and 0.68A.
I was looking at the spec from the supplier http://www.mantech.co.za/Datasheets/Products/FL57ST.pdf, looks like the FL57ST76-0686A runs on 12V. I will further investigate, do you have any recommended sites?No. You misunderstand how to drive steppers. 12V is the RATED voltage NOT the voltage you need to run it at to get decent speed/torque. I suggest a little reading. You could do worse than start here http://www.geckodrive.com/gecko/images/cms_files/Step%20Motor%20Basics%20Guide.pdf (http://www.geckodrive.com/gecko/images/cms_files/Step%20Motor%20Basics%20Guide.pdf)
I have a variable power supply and have set the max to 12V and 0.68A, so I tried to push up to 30V and the motor behavious is the same but more interestingly on the power supply it is showing 8V ?????. WIll have to investigate this.I hope you don't mean an autotransformer/variac.