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General Mach Discussion / Re: twinned motors; 2 sharing 1 driver
« on: August 17, 2010, 06:34:46 AM »
There's some stuff on cnczone by Marris and others about this but I can't find it at the moment. I seem to remember though that it went something like this: Stepper motors don't play well together off one driver. If you keep speed down to no more than two revs/sec then it'll probably be ok. Otherwise oscillation will occur and one motor is likely to draw all the current and the other will stall.
Now Marris has no doubt forgotten more about stepper systems than I'll ever know, BUT - as I've said above I've done this on several of my systems and never had a problem and that was with the motors doing up to about 10 revs/sec. Maybe geckos are even better than Marris thinks!
Personally I can't think of any reason why your drivers should be at risk but it's ultimately your choice.
Cheers
Ian
Now Marris has no doubt forgotten more about stepper systems than I'll ever know, BUT - as I've said above I've done this on several of my systems and never had a problem and that was with the motors doing up to about 10 revs/sec. Maybe geckos are even better than Marris thinks!
Personally I can't think of any reason why your drivers should be at risk but it's ultimately your choice.
2 drivers off of 1 signal is a much better solution than 2 motors off of 1 driver.Well as I've tried to say - that depends. Are you for example suggesting that I should buy a fourth driver at over $100 a time for each of my systems that work perfectly well with three?
Cheers
Ian