? about wiring Drives

[InventIt]

In a post in the Wood Router Section I was asking about wiring my Gecko Drives. I was unsure if the +5V power for the step/Dir signals could be pulled off the parrallel port. If not do you recomend a good breakout board?

www.cnczone.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3267

Thanks for your help

[pack rat]

I wanted to post a reply earlier on your other tread but forum had some difficuly. try this sitehttp://members.shaw.ca/axxus/ also there is another site I'll try to locate it and post it.

[Bloy2004]

A breakout board is always nice to have for ease of connecting the wires.
Mine is basic and just provides screw terminals for the LPT port.
As for the 5V, I was warned NOT to use the parallel port's 5V....too much current. Instead I have the 5V coming from the computer's extra hard drive connector and a single wire running to the Geckos which are daisy chained. The computer is already grounded through the parallel connector. But check your power/driver box to see if it is grounded with the computer(if you get a breakout board).

Some better breakout boards have a 5Vpower supply on the board for this purpose. Someone here can direct you to that choice, I hope...

[pack rat]

Other site ishttp://www.campbelldesigns.com/ the price difference is 90$ between the two.

[turmite]

I don't know about the other board but I sure like the Campbell. Wiring is very easy and it comes with the 5 v as well as 12 v for proximity switches.

Mike

ps it's got lots of purty red lites too!

[InventIt]

I did order the Campbell Board. It looks really easy to wire and gives circuits for relays. That will make things easier.

In the meantime, I did get the drivers working by tapping off the comp power supply. It worked fine. Thank you to those who suggested that. And thanks for the links to the breakout boards. Hope to get this thing completed soon.