5-6 axis boards.

[Loffy]

What board manufactors is around for the 5-6 axis boards, what are my options?
Any in the price range for the homemarket?

Thanks

[ger21]

You can use 5 or 6 geckos with 2 breakout boards.

[Graham S]

I use a pair of three axis drivers, one self built one from camtronics, you can make your own break out board if required

Graham

[Splint]

If you're using servos ServoToGo make a board which I think is 6 axis. CNCTekniks who advertise on this site also have a 5 axis board. Or you can use multiple single axis boards or a combination of multiple axis boards.

[Loffy]

Hi and thanks for the replies.

Im going to use stepper motors, dont know the pros or cons over serve soo I just decided to use stepper..

How do you connect multiple boards.. what are the methods?
Break out board what is that and how do you do it?

Electronics are not my main area

[Splint]

A breakout board is primarily used to make the wiring from your printer port to the controller cards easier and neater. Rather than use a cable and cut of the plug on the end so you can direct wires to the individual boards it plugs directly into the breakout board which has screw type terminals dedicted for the controller boards. Some breakout boards also have optoisolators incorporated into their design to protect the computer from voltage spikes (I think the correct term is influx voltage?). The wiring for the step and direction signals and encoder feedback are then run from the breakout board to the controler cards and the power supply wires are run from the power supply to the controler cards which regulates the voltage to the wiring which runs to the motors. You can also use a mother board to link the controller cards. The breakout board or mother board are essentially methods of making the wiring of the system easier, more or less plug and play.

[bertvk]

A breakout board is a PCB interface between the parallel port connection and your driver boards. Here's an example : http://www.embeddedtronics.com/breakout.html
They have an opto isolated version too.

Why don't you simply add a second parallel port to your computer? You can have up to three of them. I am using a breakout board from embeddetronics and two of their MicrostepPLD boards. That's good enough for 4 motors. By doubling this up I can easily go to 8 motors. The only thing I need to do is get me a cheap parallel port card. You can generally pick those up second hand for a penny on computer fairs.
Heck, I could even go to 12 stepper motors if I needed to. Not that I'll ever find any use for that (up to now).

[Vern1959]

you can try this link there cheap and seem helpfull so far I havent used these
but in my hunting for cheap stuff I found this link looks good I am not to sure about how to add home switchs and an e stop good luck

http://www.electronicutopia.com/inde...tml&lang=en-us