Newbie Question about Mach 3
Newbie Question about Mach 3
The gshield on my Shapeoko 2 recently died and I thought of switching to Mach3. Just bought an inexpensive single axis driver and breakout board on ebay. Does anyone know what the switch settings should be for a nema 17 motor on the microstep driver? Thanks.
Re: Newbie Question about Mach 3
Not without knowing which driver you have.
Is there a link to a user manual or something like that? Or at least a legend silk-screened on the board?
You want to set the current to no more than what the motor is rated for, and the microstepping to anything between 1/4 and 1/16 (1/32 is overkill, and 1/2 is usually too rough; personally, I prefer 1/16). If your driver is capable of auto-reducing the current when idle, that's handy to keep the motor cool, but often causes problems with cheap drivers because it's poorly implemented: it fails to go to full current fast enough, so your motor can lose steps at the beginning of a move.
Is there a link to a user manual or something like that? Or at least a legend silk-screened on the board?
You want to set the current to no more than what the motor is rated for, and the microstepping to anything between 1/4 and 1/16 (1/32 is overkill, and 1/2 is usually too rough; personally, I prefer 1/16). If your driver is capable of auto-reducing the current when idle, that's handy to keep the motor cool, but often causes problems with cheap drivers because it's poorly implemented: it fails to go to full current fast enough, so your motor can lose steps at the beginning of a move.
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