CNC Electronics

[volvox311]

This leaves me with ~$480.00 (but I'd prefer a bit lower as I may have to pay duty and taxes on all the other parts).

You're close to the NY border at Ogdensburg and can get a U.S. shipping address (not a P.O. box). I use Kinek but whatever suits you if this is a viable option.

Piney Bowes implements the eBay global shipping program, which is outrageously expensive, but they recommend coding import duty & taxes for CNC Machine parts as follows:

The import duty rate for importing CNC Machine parts into Canada is 0% , the import GST depends on the province, when classified under DIY, Tools & Crafts → DIY | power tools → Routers with HS commodity code 8467.29.0090
The import duty rate for importing CNC Machine parts into Canada is 0%

[louieatienza]

Louietienza, why should I "get something in the range of 48V or less" for a driver? What difference is there between drivers above or below 48V?

And what is the UC100 anyway? I searched it on ebay and all I get is a usb to parallel port wire?

USB Motion Controller FOR MACH3 UC100 | eBay

And are these items any good:

BOB ($7.61 CAD): 1pcs 5 Axis CNC Breakout Board for Stepper Driver Controller Mach3 | eBay

Steppers ($116.34 CAD) : High Torque Nema 23 CNC Stepper Motor 113mm 3Nm(425oz.in) 23HS45-4204S - US$

Drivers($243.33 CAD): 1pc DQ542MA CNC Nema Hybrid Stepping Stepper Motor Driver 50V 4 2A 128 Microstep | eBay

How do I determine what type of power supply to get?

And do I still need a motion controller or is it built into the BOB?

And could someone explain exactly what all the stepper motor specs like inductance, rotor inertia, etc mean, how they affect performance, and roughly what values are good?

The max voltage of the DM542A is 50V. I already mentioned you don't need the UC100 which is a USB pulse generator for Mach3.

Get a plain BOB. 25 pins, 25 terminals and ground. You don't need anything fancier.

Get whatever stepper you feel you can afford that's about 380in-oz. If you can only fine 425in-oz that's fine, because at 48V it'll probably have about 380in-oz torque. Only thing because of the bigger windings, it'll have more inductance, therefore lower top end speed.

Again, you can run those 425in-oz likely at over 75V max. But you can only drive them to 48V max with the DM542A.

The motion controller will be Mach3 (which you have to buy if you're making programs with over 500 lines, so yes you have to buy it), or LinuxCNC (which is free). Both require a PC, and if you have a parallel port (you can buy a card for $10) you're set to go.

As to other numbers: Do your research. Lot of info on the GeckoDrive site - read it ALL. None of the values are bad; they'll all work depending on the application. Generally smaller motors = less windings = lower inductance = better high end torque. Big motors = more windings = higher inductance = better low end torque. You can over-voltage a stepper motor provided you keep it cool. You CANNOT over-current a stepper motor. Is there an exact explanation? It would take a couple dozen pages at least with diagrams, graphs, etc. We're not engineering these things so that we make 5000 copies of this machine. We're making one,

By the way, if you buy a MX3660, about $290, and three cheap 425in-oz steppers, about $110, you still have $50 to get whatever PSU, and you don't need a breakout board; the parallel port cable plugs directly in. Or get a G540 for a little less street. Even though the MX3660 allows up to 60V max, I'd get the G540 only because of the better support from GeckoDrive (you can go to the benchtop machines section and see there are a couple issues some people had with MX3660.)