Newbie questions :) -Stepmaster.

[Jay Dub]

This is my first post on this forum so please be kind . I am in the process of building my first benchtop cnc mill conversion. I purchased an old (but in nice condition) spectralight desktop mill, without controller. I figured it would be a good starting project. I had purchased a new StepmasterNC 4 axis board a year or two ago but had not found time to use it. I recently decided to purchase steppers for it, and in doing the research I found that A: I had questions, and B: apparently Stepmaster boards are pieces of $hit . So, The first questions I have are:

- Should I even bother with the Stepmaster board?
- If I do, should I expect it to fry?
- Has anyone had good experiences with the Stepmaster products?
- If so, what were "realistic" settings and or mods (eg. fans and heatsinks amperage settings) that helped with reliability issues.

In the process of selecting steppers, I found myself wondering how to determine what voltage I should be choosing. In the manual that came with the board, it describes how to adjust the amperage to match the steppers but, there is no mention of a VOLTAGE range for the steppers. It recomends a power supply of 24 to 30 VDC, but says it will work down to 12VDC.

- Does this correlate to the stepper motor rated voltages?
- How do I know what voltage rating I should have on the steppers?
- What is/does the Percent Fast Decay (PFD) do? As there is no description of what it is or what it does in the manual- just how to adjust it (LOL!)

Thanks in advance for the help, as I am very excited to get into this project the right way.-Jeff