Custom Smoothie Shield

Yes I thought about that, but I need to supply 2-3 amps to the laser module, as well as the x axis motor and possibly a z axis motor if I can figure out a good solution for it.

Oh this is a diode laser sorry that escaped me. But then why the extra stepper driver?

Edit: nevermind, full steps. Really doubt you actually need to run anything at full steps, thatā€™s very unprobable. I guess itā€™s designed that way now so youā€™ll be able to test anyway.

Yes, unfortunately as I really wanted to get the boards done and as I didnā€™t have the z axis motor, I didnā€™t get a chance to test anything. I assumed that 16 microsteps would not be suitable as the motor was supposed to have a step angle of 5.625 degrees and a 1/64 gearbox, which would have meant 4096 steps per revolution. In my testing this does not appear to be the case, as it appears to be half that. In any case the motor is way to slow to drive a 5mm threaded rod, so I will have to rethink that part and do some more testing. My obsession with keeping the z axis super light, is probably not going to be practical and maybe I will get a nema8 motor to try or worst case, use a pancake nema17.

At least I have to option of a different stepper driver for the z axis and if I donā€™t use it I can simply, make a short lead that goes from M3 to the z motor outputs on the shield, so that it is still fed down the ribbon cable.

2 Likes

So, even with my crappy old eyes, shaky hands and poor soldering skills, I managed to get the shield and x connector PCBs assembled. I originally intended to remove the molex connectors, where necessary and put some single row headers in their place, but I was having trouble desoldering them and in fear of destroying a pad or the board, opted for a different strategy. I simply pulled of the white molex plastics and slid some single row header plastics over the pins and them trimmed the pins to the correct length. Aligning the 68 pins connecting the smoothieboard to the shield was a little tricky and I had serious doubts that if I ever took the shield off, I would ever get it aligned again, but in reality it comes off and goes back on with relative ease.

The x connector PCB was much simpler to assembleā€¦

So far, I have tested the x axis motor and x min/max, y min/max endstops and everything appears to be working as intended. I just need to do the h connector PCB and make up the 16 way ribbon cable.

4 Likes