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You might want to take another look at the Gecko. It is supposed to have individual drivers inside that nice case. I haven't opened mine to find out however!
Regards,
Randy
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My build is progressing nicely. I'm at the stage where I need to start ordering electronics. I've looked at the Gecko G540 and the Keling setup. Each has its pluses and minuses.
I like the Keling setup because of its individual drivers (I'm looking at the KL-4030 drivers). If one goes out, you don't have to replace the whole board. You are only out about $50. Problem is all the components take up a lot of space. I'm not sure there is enough space for all three drivers and the breakout board. It is also less expensive.
The pluses for the Gecko are obviously the size. Very compact. With that come a price though. It is ~$70 - $100 more (depending on where you get it) and that money could go for more things to finish the machine. The minus is that if you blow one driver, the whole board is shot and you are out the complete replacement cost.
Both systems support limit switches which I like. Some systems don't.
So opinions? Has anyone tried the Keling setup in a Momus? I've seen plenty of good reviews of their stuff on their part of this forum. Ive also seen good and bad about the Gecko. Mostly good though.
You might want to take another look at the Gecko. It is supposed to have individual drivers inside that nice case. I haven't opened mine to find out however!
Regards,
Randy
The G540 has four G250 drives inside it. While it is more expensive, Gecko also has a great reputation for standing behind their products. My guess is that if you ever had a problem, that $50 that would have gone toward buying a new Keling drive would go a long way in getting repair work done on a G540. From what I've been reading, I doubt you would be unhappy with the Gecko. BTW, my own G540 just arrived in the mail yesterday (from Keling, with their 381 oz/in steppers.) And then I promptly left for a long weekend, so I don't get to play with it until next week.
-Bob
The 540 is comprised of 4 g250 controllers. You can buy the G250's separate If you wanted too. They are not as top of the line as the other controllers. For something like the momus the G250s would work great where your not going to go over 425oz steppers to control it. I dont think you need to look at there other controllers unless your going to run a bigger machine. Really the only reason i know this is i was drinking last night and my finger slipped and hit the buy now on a Gecko 540. So since i got one on the way i researched it a bit. Here is a pic of the single g250
Wow, don't I feel stupid now. I actually had gone to the Geckodrive website and read about the G540. Somehow, I COMPLETELY missed the part about them being modular. Duh! G540 it is for me then.
I have the Keling setup, although I've only bench tested it so far. I didn't want to spend the money for Gecko, and I didn't really like the solutions with a single drive board for all the channels. I really like how well packaged the Keling drivers are, with a nice solid case and built in heat sink. I got the 425 oz-in steppers, but again I've only benched tested them. With extra torque comes slower speed, so my Z axis will use 2 starts.
I think it will fit in the standard enclosure, although I haven't tried it. I'm doing all my metal first and will then make the enclosure to fit. I'm planning on stretching my X axis (32" or 36") so I won't have a standard wood enclosure anyway by the time I get that far.
Keling KL-4030's are about 4.6" x 2.8" x 1.5". The breakout board is 4.8" x 2.7" x 0.5". The 36V power supply is 9" x 4.5" x 2" which might be really tight with the standard enclosure. The bigger opening is only 8.625 wide, but I think there is a bit more room than that behind the right skin.
Yes, the cavity itself is a few inches larger, so the 9" power supply should fit in there fine. All of the other component should also fit with some careful layout. And if you do end up stretching the X axis, that will give more room yet.The bigger opening is only 8.625 wide, but I think there is a bit more room than that behind the right skin.
The double start Z leadscrew sounds like a good match for the bigger motors.
My own G540 arrived last week. I got it all wired up over the weekend and went to bench test it, only to discover that my parallel port cable that worked with the Xylotex is the opposite of what mates up to the Gecko. So now I'm impatiently waiting for a $2 male/male gender adapter to arrive in the mail so I can try out my new toys.
-Bob
I would be really surprised if you weren't very happy with the G540 once you've used it, especially if you've used cheap ones before. It really is like night and day the difference!
cheers,
Ian
It's rumoured that everytime someone buys a TB6560 based board, an engineer cries!
Yeah, it should be a nice upgrade from the Xylotex that I had been using. Although I can't complain at all about the performance of that drive. For its cost, it worked great.
While on the topic of electronics... When I bought the G540 I also got some new 4-wire shielded cable (from Keling) to re-wire the machine. Well, this stuff is very, very stiff. Each wire only has 7 strands in it, and it is not very flexible. I hesitate to use this for very long, for fear of it breaking under repeated flex cycles. Does anyone have any good suggestions for a supplier of nice flexible 4-wire shielded cable that can be purchased in small quantities? Or have about 8-10 feet left over that you'd care to sell? And please don't point me to the CNCrouterParts cables. They look very nice, but I'm using the Soigeneris EZ-G540 DB-9 connectors so I'll have an adjustable resistor, and to keep them at the G-540 end.
-Bob
Check out McMaster-Carr's wire selection. I haven't looked it over myself very recently, but they usually carry several types of continuous-flex rated wire for purposes such as ours. I do remember it being pretty spendy, 5 or 6 bucks a foot for the shielded stuff, but IMHO it's worth it to spend a little extra on the right thing for the right job. (says the guy who'll be using some surplus aircraft wire for now, if he ever gets his damn machine finished)
What gauge you want then?Originally Posted by parallel__lines
This place:
Multi-Conductor Shielded Cables
has some 4 conductor stranded and tinned 18 ga with shield for 1.10 per foot, for instance.
The best is a MIL spec Tefzel insulated stranded wire they use in aircraft as the number of bend cycles is actually tested per batch as part of the MIL spec, but that's why its so pricey.
"72.6 per cent of all statistics are made up on the spot." - Steven Wright
What about the stuff HubbardCNC sells on eBay?
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