I received the Gecko G540 today. A rather nice looking package. The documentation I thought I'd receive with the board was non-existent, however, the internet turned up the manual in about 30 seconds.

Reading the documentation I find that I was to receive four (4) DB9 connectors with the package but did not receive them so I searched my electronics boxes and found nothing. Off the email the company but will probably drive the 30 miles to get them tomorrow.

  Now comes the interesting part. The Gecko documentation states that I need to know the inductance of the motors and of coarse, China did not send any data on these motors and I have search the web to no end - 57BYGH76-401A 1.8" Any knowledge about these little motors?

  Then the documentation says to connect the power supply to the 12 pin connector but does not go into the connection block till many pages later so I sat here scratching my head. I'll just read and not do for now.

CES
p.s. I'm hoping to be Zooming in a few days 

Hi CES,

In the absence of any stepper motor data and because they were running too hot at 2.5 Amps with the Chinese blue board then a good starting point may be 2 Amps by fitting a 2K ohms 1/4Watt resistor. If the motors still run too hot then reduce the resistance value according to the Gecko Manual.

Tweakie.

Tweakie, All,

  I received the G540 from Gecko on Wednesday but the package lacked the DB9 connectors. I checked out the G540 as far as the Fault LED and the Green Power LED functioning as described. I now have two of the three motors turning in both directions. One stepper motor does not function in any of the axis but the other two function in three of the axis connections.
  Hurray for small points.

  The stepper motors are from a Chinese company named Goodluckbuy. Please stay away from this site as they may do to you what they have done to me. They did not ship the power supply so I had to fight with them for several weeks and ended up going to Visa to get the refund for the supply they did not ship to me.
  Well, bad new now as one of the stepper motors is not working and they will not respond to any email I send. I'd say this is total customer loss on their part and I hope they lose everyone that reads this post.

  Sorry to bash but I have seen the same on many other blogs

  Has anyone ever taken a stepper motor apart? Looks like four screws from my point of view.
CES

Hi CES,

I am pleased to hear that you are on your way. 

Just one note on stepper motors (and other motors for that matter) the copper wire used for the windings is insulated with a lacquer and it's insulating properties can easily be damaged by running them too hot.

Tweakie.

Has anyone ever taken a stepper motor apart?

Yes and you can't fix them. Suggest that you check the ones that are working and record the resistance  ( actualy many meters can also measure inductance and that's what you want) and make note of what  it is for each winding.
Then check the one that is not working and compare. Doing a continuity test will show you if the winding is bad.

Usual rating on a stepper is like 180 deg F and you would blow the fuse , it will not work right, it will smell if the winding was
burnt, and if shorted would proabably also blow the drive. Note that  if the amps are to low the motor will not turn.

RICH

 

AAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!

 I new I should not have wired up that last stepper motor on Thursday night. I swapped a Green wire for a Blue wire.

I'll have it up in 90 minutes!

They Work! They Work!

All motors are turning and I have very little left to do to have a working CNC.
Tune the motors,
Attach the motors to the Mill,
Add the limit switches and wires,
and get a CAM program.

I'll have a 21" touch screen display, no keyboard (well, on-screen keyboard),
A Grizzly CNC with near zero backlash as opposed to the 6mm in X, the 12mm in Y and 13mm in Z I had.

I'll be a happy newbie to the CNC world...

I'm running the steppers at 2.2A so if I have problems I can increase that up to 3.5A.

I'll post pictures when it is all up and running.

Oh one last item. I doubt my 24V 14.6A supply is going to drive the motors per the Gecko spec. I'll need a higher voltage at the same current.

add more current

add more current

The main issues have been bypassed. The 24V supply is working fine and the Mill is working well. I'm running down the last bits of backlash. I have polished my X and Y ways (which fixed a lot of the issue). Still have uneven backlash in X axis. Working on that...

CES