On 9/30/2015 5:54 AM, Mark Wendt wrote: > On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 7:33 PM, Dave Cole <linuxcncro...@gmail.com> wrote: >> I purchased some very cheap stepper drives based on the TB6660 Toshiba >> chip a little while ago for a very much "budget driven" controller build >> using LinuxCNC for a Sherline Mill and Lathe. >> >> They are all over Ebay and the part number of the side is HY-DIV268N-5A >> >> I think I paid $17 each for them with free shipping. >> >> They claim to be good for 5 amps and 48 volts DC. >> >> Other people have said they are only good for about 4 amp and 40 volts. >> >> I purchased 3 drives from a guy in the US off Ebay and immediately took >> them apart when I got them. >> >> Some of the leads in the through holes were not cut off close to the >> board and it appears that they would contact the aluminum heat sink and >> short out. >> >> I trimmed the leads and slid in a piece of heavy paper to try and keep >> any leads away from the heat sink and reassembled the drives. >> >> I put them in a box (3 drives total) and wired them to a 36 volt power >> supply and a $10 Chinese breakout board also off Ebay. >> >> I wired everything up and have had it powered up for several days now >> without issues. I only have one stepper motor to play with (the rest >> of the machine/s is in Wyoming) >> >> I used the standard LinuxCNC setup example but changed the scaling so I >> could set the drives to 8x microstepping. (the example seems to be >> setup for 4x microstepping) The stepper motors are 2 amp motors and they >> run warm but not ridiculously hot with these stepper drives. >> >> There are some real horror stories about these drives but most of the >> stories are from 1-2 years ago. Apparently the Chinese fixed the issues >> as the table printed on the side of the drive to set the stepping and >> amp settings seems to be correct. >> >> If you have a budget motion control project I would recommend them. >> I wish I could have used some Gecko drives in this box but considering >> that three of these cheap drives cost less than one 3.5 amp Geckodrive, >> and they do drive the stepper motors, what is there not to like. >> >> >> Dave > Dave, > > Most of the horror stories were related to the TB6560 series of the > Chinese boards. The TB6660 boards were better. They did have some > small issues, which I don't remember, but were a lot less finicky to > the turn on and turn off voltage sequence that plagued and smoke many > of the 6560 boards. There's a really long post over in the Electonics > forum on CNCZone about what guys have done to try and work around the > 6560 problem. Most of them end up throwing the 6560 boards in the > trash. ;-) > > Mark
Yes, I think the 6560 boards were simply junk. The workarounds to make those boards work were extreme. I watched that for a while and decided not to even bother with those. There are a fair number of horror stories about the early TB 6660 drives as well, but nothing comparable to the 6560 horror stories. But it looks like they have made corrections to the TB 6660 drives, at least the one I mentioned. I'd still disassemble them to check for problems but for $17 each, that is not a problem. I am only driving the motor at 1.8 amps but the drive stays entirely cool - no notice of heat at all. I screwed them to an aluminum backplane to aide in heat dissipation but I think that was unnecessary. These drives are not quite as smooth as Geckodrives, but they work. Hey, did I see that you are no longer a Washingtonian? Does that mean that you now live in the land of the left hand (MI) ? ;-) My daughter lives in Chevy Chase and I continually hear about the cost of this and that. For her Washington is still great, but not as great as it was when she first moved there. Dave > > --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
