Stepper control boards and parallel PC port

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Thread Starter

Sandro Fergnani

In the past weeks I was looking for a stepper motor control board to build a hobby CNC foam cutter. I was surprised about the prices !! Since I'm a programmer and I know almost nothing about specialized hardware like motion control boards, I'm wondering why such boards are so expensive. I was looking for a 4 axis stepper control board to be connected to a parallel (or serial) port but I didn't find anything below 600-700 US$. So the question is: why are commercial boards so expensive ? May be that the target market of boards manufacturers is the high end one, and the hobby market is not worth the efforts to develop a cheap board ?
 
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Curt Wuollet

Try Jameco.com and meci.com Not super cheap but moderate. There are a lot of available designs you can build also. Check the amateur robotics sites. You must have been looking in all the wrong places. There are many hobby grade boards around. They differ from the pro boards in damping, microstepping and speed mostly. MECI has some leadscrews and stuff you might be able to use. Another resource is eval boards from the chip makers. Regards cww
 
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Doug Fortune

Sandro Fergnani wrote 3/21/2001: > In the past weeks I was looking for a stepper motor control board to build a hobby CNC foam cutter. I was surprised about the prices !! Since I'm a programmer and I know almost nothing about specialized hardware like motion control boards, I'm wondering why such boards are so expensive. I was looking for a 4 axis stepper control board to be connected to a parallel (or serial) port but I didn't find anything below 600-700 US$. < You are looking in the wrong places! Try the various links at my parallel port cnc Stepper Tutorial/FAQ/Links page at: http://www.cncKITS.com There are a number of motor driver vendors there, from simple and cheap steppers, to high end moderately priced microsteppers and servo drivers. Additionally, there are some foam cutter project links there too for your interest, as well as a number of free and lowcost software drivers for Linux, windoze, and dos. Actually doing the parallel port electrical wiring was a pain, so I'm making available my parallel port breakout/passthrough board here on the website. I also suggest a way to send 4 bits and the potentiometer through the parallel cable (actually they are inputs), giving a total of 12 output bits and 9 input bits using the adapter. Note: the signals go through the parallel cable for convenience, but the traces to the parallel port are cut for the gameport signals (which also provides a source of +5V if you need it!). Any questions, please ask Doug Fortune [email protected]
 
Hobby CNC _Dave Rigoli has a complete kit with motors for $300. I built it. It works
well. Still dealing with software issues.

Richard [email protected]

I have been working on a CNC hot wire also. One item I have found is cheap and well built is the "screw-drive" type of worm-gear unit used
on many garage door openers. Grainger sells a cheap u-joint type of adapter to allow the stepper motor to drive it.

Richard
 
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