printer parts

[recoton]

Has anybody ever heard of rewiring and using a printer controller board or would it be a lot less hassle to make my own controllers

[dsquire]

Originally Posted by recoton Has anybody ever heard of rewiring and using a printer controller board or would it be a lot less hassle to make my own controllers

I am sure that someone out there must know something about using a printer controller board to control steppers.

I have several Epson, HP and Lexmark printers that have small stepper motors. I would also like to learn more about these to make a small DIY CNC machine. All that I want it to do is drag a pencil around and draw some lines.

This would help me learn about steppers and control circuits before I take the plunge and go for nema 23's or 46's.

I am not thinking about using printer controller boards to power nema 23's but only for learning purposes on small printer motors using printer carriage parts.

Any takers?

Don

[keebler303]

You would be hard pressed to get those drivers to work how you want. If you search the zone you will find lots of info about trying it, with no success I'm aware of. If you want a cheap, low current driver, you can make one for only a few dollars in parts. If you have 5, 6, or 8 wires coming out of the motors you can use them on a simple unipolar driver like this:
http://www.aaroncake.net/circuits/stepper.asp

If you have 4 wire motors, you will need a more complex bipolar driver. If you want a relatively low cost bipolar driver, as well as several other great cnc circuits, check out:
www.pminmo.com
Phil is a member of the zone and contributes a lot to the hobby CNC world.

good luck

Matt

[dsquire]

Originally Posted by keebler303 You would be hard pressed to get those drivers to work how you want. If you search the zone you will find lots of info about trying it, with no success I'm aware of. If you want a cheap, low current driver, you can make one for only a few dollars in parts. If you have 5, 6, or 8 wires coming out of the motors you can use them on a simple unipolar driver like this: http://www.aaroncake.net/circuits/stepper.asp If you have 4 wire motors, you will need a more complex bipolar driver. If you want a relatively low cost bipolar driver, as well as several other great cnc circuits, check out: www.pminmo.com Phil is a member of the zone and contributes a lot to the hobby CNC world. good luck Matt

Hi Matt

Thanks for the reply.

I noticed this post earlier today and saw that Recotton had not gotten any replies in nearly a month. So I thought that I would rephrase the question and try again seeing as I have a similar interest.

With the collection of motors that I have I probably have from 4 to 8 wire motors and some are much larger than others as well as different voltage and current and step ratings.

When I started collecting these motors, most came out of pin printers and later inkjets and laser printers. When I first started I thought of motors as DC or AC but didn't know the difference between normal, stepper or servo motors, now at least I have that figured out.

I also have collected a fair amount of chips, transistors, resistors. caps, voltage regulators etc. I figure that a few of these might be useful for this project but if not I don't have problem with buying new.

I don't want to buy a ready made solution as that would take away fun of learning how things work and if I build it I will be better able to repair or trouble shoot if need be.

Thanks again for the links and I will check them out shortly. If you have any other advise I am all ears (eyes!).

cheers

Don

[cnc kiwi]

Hi Don,
I would also like to use salvaged parts from a printer to make a small homemade cnc machine using the driver board and steppers. I have extensively researched the particular chips that are in my driver and found that data sheets are really useful as they give you pinouts and sometimes even a sample application circuit. the problem I've found is that my chips need too many inputs (about 10 per stepper) so i think I might make up my own circuit like the ones on pminmo.com instead. but i'll still use the steppers. If you do use the controller boards from the printer its much better to solder wires onto the inputs'ouputs on the board than trying to extricate the chip as the board already has all the discrete components you need to make it work all wired up.
I hope you manage to get it all sorted with your cnc.
Regards Allan

[dsquire]

Originally Posted by cnc kiwi Hi Don, I would also like to use salvaged parts from a printer to make a small homemade cnc machine using the driver board and steppers. I have extensively researched the particular chips that are in my driver and found that data sheets are really useful as they give you pinouts and sometimes even a sample application circuit. the problem I've found is that my chips need too many inputs (about 10 per stepper) so i think I might make up my own circuit like the ones on pminmo.com instead. but i'll still use the steppers. If you do use the controller boards from the printer its much better to solder wires onto the inputs'ouputs on the board than trying to extricate the chip as the board already has all the discrete components you need to make it work all wired up. I hope you manage to get it all sorted with your cnc. Regards Allan

Hi Allan

Thanks for the reply.

I have looked at some of the circuits on pminmo.com and may try one of them. I agree that it is probably better to solder wires onto the inputs/ouputs on the board. Most of the chips have such fine pin spacing that trying to remove and reuse them would be difficult. Also, like you say, a lot of the discrete parts are already there.

I guess that I should get the magnifing glass out and look at some of the boards that I have and see if I can reverse engineer them to get a schematic that I can follow and also see if I can come up with some data sheets for the chips.

As I said in an earlier post this is mostly for a learning experience so that when I do move on to a large CNC router I will have a bit better understanding of what is happening and why.

I guess that time and patience will tell if I can succeed.

cheers

Don