Who has used Tom McWires driver circuit?

[technovative]

I get the impression that most folks who use this forum prefer chopper/pwm based driver circuits and I'm curious if any of you have used Tom McWires driver circuit as posted in this article http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy...and-Driver-ci/? If so what has your experience with it been, and how do you rate it?

[yaycnc]

its quite a basic circuit. it only does full stepping (low torque/current) mode which might be all you need.
if you want a similar hardcoded design for high torque full stepping there is one here http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi..._Driver_CD.png
uses 2 chips too.. just drop it in to mcwires circuit to replace the logic.

having everything hardcoded is nice and reliable and easy to set up (no programming), but i would prefer using a programmable microcontroller. which means you can swap between any driving scheme (full/half etc) with a flick of a switch. and its no more expensive really.
I made a thread here with a really simple pic driver that does full/half stepping for 2 motors.
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showpo...71&postcount=1
I am sure there are far better pic based drvers out there, but mine is simple and good if you only want half/full stepping.

another cheap option is the linistepper.

[JohnnyVegas]

I am rebuilding just a single drive from his design to test some samll motor finds. My first attempt at this circuit failed - I seriously OVERPOWERED it by mistake. I had a few bad parts.

I will post as I complete the testing.