Demi Marie Obenour21h ago
Cassandrich

A problem someone should probably be working on: high quality high performance stepper motor drivers (ala TMCs) as open source firmware to run on dirt cheap commodity MCUs.

Both supply chain instability and fascist regimes wanting to restrict ordinary people's access to CNC machinery (including #3dprinting) risk making it hard to get commercial drivers, and they're overpriced anyway. But general purpose MCUs and mosfets are easy to get.

Mar 30 at 1:01amWeb
Show threadcliffle5d ago
@dalias how much are they going for? Are these single stepper drivers?
Show threadCassandrich5d ago

@cliffle I don't know what the chip itself goes for but the ones with external mosfets that can do medium to high current and that support high voltage are $35 each for the complete stepsticks (driver ic + mosfets + sense resistor & maybe a few other parts) and you need 4+ for a printer.

Lower end ones with integrated mosfets are under $10 each.

Show threadkabel424d ago
@dalias
How many microsteps do you need?
maybe you could modify a bldc library like https://www.simplefoc.com/
Arduino Simple Field Oriented Control project

Arduino Based Field Oriented Control library and shield aimed to demystify the FOC algorithm for the hobby community.

Simple FOC