Hey Guys, I am looking for some recommendations.

CAD & CAM Tool Chain ChiliPeppr
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Hey Guys, I am looking for some recommendations. I have a CNC shark with Nema 23 Steppers. It uses a proprietary controller which is not that great. I want to upgrade to a Gecko server driver, but they use a printer port connection. Can anyone recommend a motion controller that will drive a Gecko and will work with Chilipeppr?

Thanks,
Justin

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You can get a TinyG and then just hook the step/dir signals to your Gecko drivers. You can also bypass the Gecko drivers and use the drivers on the TinyG board. They do pump out some decent amps. Run it at the highest voltage you can.

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Thanks John, Maybe I’ll go with that. I wasn’t sure that the TinyG could handle the NEMA 23s.

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Have a look around over at https://plus.google.com/communities/110852928951643236736
Many Ox users have tinyG connected to Geckos external drivers
But Start with the native (on-board) drivers to get a feel, and if you can, use Vmot around 28V(stay at/below 30V). And a good breeze blowing on tinyG.

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Thanks Carl, I went ahead and ordered a TinyG. I am considering upgrading to NEMA 34s, so it is nice to know that I can use it to drive Geckos. I have 24V right now, so it should be good.

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I ran a g540 with nema 23 and mach 3 for years. There’s a learning curve with a tiny g board and chilipeppr. The settings can be daunting. I’ve fried a few tinyg s with hooking things up wrong i.e.plasma cutter and laser control. Im sure there is an easy resistor break out board style solution. That being said…no parallel port!!! Usb baby! I feed signal directly to my tinyg cnc controller with a raspberry pi3 running the json server. When i jog my machine into place over my local network with my phone as a pendant and monitor and control my cnc jobs via wifi on my laptop in my living room i cant bring myself to even consider going back. I struggle with motion control settings but the tinyg is actually superior motion control for steppers; acceleration is adjustable to run fast and avoid missing steps. Ironing out the bugs will be difficult, like pauses between code execution and buffers of code released to the board to maintain consistancy. These are for the advanced. I get the same holding torque with 24 volts and faster ipm. Hope this helps.

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