Stepper Board

[RobiD]

Hey Milt.

The board is tried and tested.

http://www.safeweightloss4kids.com/d...rDIPedited.LAY

Let me know if you are having trouble with it.

David

Oh, by the way, I'm happy for anyone to use this mod.

[mondo50m]

David--Thank you very much. Just one question, does this board control just one stepper, or will it do more? And, what are the steppers that you are using? I have some that have come out of old printers and other equipment. I just have to identify the wires, but that is not too bad. I found a place that has small steppers for about $2.50 each, various voltages, (from 3.1 to 4.

Milt.

[Jan737]

Hi,

Good to hear that the problem with the board is solved!!
I've build a view boards now and want to try it, but I've no experience how to make the code in C++ for it.
Does anybody has a piece of example code?


Best regards

Jan Geurtsen

[mondo50m]

Jan737---I have not built a stepper unit yet, so I do not know what will be involved. I have built a couple of the servo style gauges. I spent about an hour and a half with Stefan in Germany learning how to do the programming. I only know the basics at this time, but I am learning. I would like to see someone make a VERY detailed tutorial on what we need to know. Maybe someone will. There are steps involved in the programming that must be followed to the letter to get things working correctly. I am not familiar enough to do this myself.

Milt

[RobiD]

David--Thank you very much. Just one question, does this board control just one stepper, or will it do more? And, what are the steppers that you are using? I have some that have come out of old printers and other equipment. I just have to identify the wires, but that is not too bad. I found a place that has small steppers for about $2.50 each, various voltages, (from 3.1 to 4.

Milt.

Hi Milt.

One board, one stepper motor.

I've used a couple of different ones. The higher the current the motor draws, the hotter the driver chip gets. I am using a couple of bigger motors from photocopying machines and have had to add heat sinks to the driver chip to stop it cooking.

There is not a lot of weight to move with the motors, so the smaller the better. These are an ideal type of motor (size and current) http://www.futurlec.com/PM35S.shtml

Jan737,
The FSBus problem is solved as yet, but will be very soon with the pending release of the new FSBus dll v3. This new release will solve all known problems at this time. It will require some minor changes to existing code but nothing major (so Dirk says).

I must say that when I started with FSBus a long time ago, it was fairly simple to implement. But as our needs for complexity have increased, so has the programming skills required.

I knew nothing about programming C++ but with the help of people like Stefan and many others, I now am quite comfortable programming basic switches, servo gauges, air core gauges etc. In fact I managed to program most of my MCP myself with fine tuning help and some basic code supplied to me.

Hope the info helps.

David

[mondo50m]

Took a quick look at the site for the steppers that you suggested. The one site I saw the PM35s on, wanted $58.00 each for them. That seems to be a little steep. Need to go with the $2.50 ones I found. Tried to include the url, but it kept cutting in short so try: www.allelectronics.com
They seem like they should work.

Milt

[RobiD]

Milt,

I would never pay more that about $6 for a motor. If you know of an old printer (larger one) being thrown out. Grab it and get the steppers out of it. They only need to be small low torque ones as they are not moving a big load.

At $2.50 each, sounds like a good buy.

Cheers
David