Powerlolu
Contents
Intro
Powerlolu appears to be a modular, higher power replacement (2.5-5A) for the smaller Pololu. We want to use the RAMPS (Powerlolu) for our CNC Torch Table.
Design
Schematic at Upverter - http://upverter.com/alexh/ed1b6905257872ed/Powerlolu/
History
Based on STOMP GPL3 - http://li79-15.members.linode.com/projects
https://github.com/kliment/Stomp/blob/master/stomp.png
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:40540
Communications
May
Great to hear from you. You can see more about our work at this TED talk. Our immediate need is 2.5A and up for serious stepper motors for CNC Torch Table Prototype II (prototype I was shown in the TED talk)
http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/File:Table_Frame.JPG
I would like this to be 1-off producible via CNC circuit mill, such as the open source Shapeoko (I'd like to know if you know of any better off-shelf open source variants of a CNC circuit mill? Jeff?). That is our preferred route for rapid prototyping, until the point where we stabilize a design. In any case, our goal is to make something designed for an off-shelf CNC circuit mill to enable full control of the technology by the user.
Interestingly, I looked up the driver chip and found this immediately - i appears to be open source -
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:40540
With fully-assembled board available:
https://shop.germanreprap.com/en/Powerlolu-Stepper-Motor-Driverup-to-10A
and #kliment from #reprap IRC pulling code from the Powerlolu github repository - so he appears to be involved.
Can you help us design a prototype driver equivalent of the above that we can mill with a CNC circuit mill? It appears that the component cost would be about $20 per channel in single units?
June 2013
The Sanguinololu board is the controller, and the controller is the brain. The power handling stage is called the Stepper Driver - which needs to be 2.5 amps or more. This board here is compatible with Pololu and Powerlolu.
http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Powerlolu - up to 10 A. good.
http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Pololu - up to 2.2 A (too small)
So the questions to the IRC channel are:
1. Who has experience with Powerlolu? 2. Can we buy it reliably and just use with existing RAMPS (RepRap electronics)? 3. What tricks are required to make it work? Does it give us say 2.5A-3A reliably?
If someone has that experience, take down names, and then we can invite them for a DPV if they can make it.
June 10, 2013
June 12, 2013
Hi Marcin, you can buy the powerlolu from germanreprap.com. Don't think they have a dealer in the US right now. The should have it in stock. regards, Alfred - abauer
Links
- A4989 Stepper driver chip specs - [1]
- Sourcing of complete board - [2]
- Design at Upverter - [3]
- Announcement by German RepRap - [4]
- Chip from Digikey - [5]
- Open source driver from Cuteminds.com - [6]
- Source at https://github.com/fluidfred - to #kliment at #reprap IRC.
- $7 for chip - [7]
- Application schematic from Datasheet Zone - [8]
- Another homebrew circuit - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNfdSBDoh48
