Hi

Has anybody managed to get the Smoothstepper / C32 board combo to work with a non Gecko stepper driver ?.

I read the stuff about easy setup but missed the bit in the documentation where it says only various Gecko drives are supported.

At the moment I'm trying to use a DMD556 stepper driver which has a good spec and a 285 oz/in motor. The board seems to be transmitting, once powered up, the motor holds position pretty strongly and if I try to jog the axis one way then the other, I can hear a slight clunk from inside the motor but no actual movement.

Feels like it is close but not quite there. I'm hoping not to need to buy different stepper drives.

Can anybody suggest anything ?

Thanks

Paul

So you have the Step and Dir pins assigned the correct way round?
Hood

Thanks Hood, good call

I tried swapping step and dir and it now makes the right kind of noise and moves what seems like a couple of degrees per jog (even when in continuous mode).

Getting there, it now looks / feels like a motor & drive tuning exercise which I'll have a go at in the morning.

Thanks again.

Paul

Do you have a link to documentation on the drtives?

Hood

Yes

Here's the link...

http://www.motioncontrolproducts.com/pdfs/DMD556_Digital_stepper_drive-rev2.pdf

Cheers

Paul

Thanks, have similar drives on the coil winder and they work quite well. I did have issues with a few of the dip switches being the opposite to the documentation but not sure if it will be the same with this or not, one was the StepDir/CW CCW. If you still have issues try flipping it and see if it helps.
Hood

Hood

Thanks very much for the help, once I swapped the step / dir connections it was just a matter of tuning the motor settings in Mach

All the best

Paul

Great to hear you got it
Hood