Zen XY steppers

ZenXY Troubleshooting
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Just got my Pen/Laser board … ://wiki.fluidnc.com/en/hardware/official/TMC2209_Pen_Laser_V2

(sorry can’t include links yet)

I wired the steppers up to the board and tried to get the board operational. After about 20 minutes I stopped becaues I couldn’t get the laptop to even see the board…..back to the forum documents wikis etc I was finally able to resolve the multiple problems. When I did quit to get more info I noticed that the steppers were very very hot .

This is a “whats left over from other projects that I used to do at work ZEN XY”. The steppers are not the same ones that Ryan provides but they were in the left over box so I thought I’d try them Stepper motor - NEMA-17 size - 200 steps/rev, 12V 350mA …… purchased from Adafruit .com/product/324

I bought these over 10 years ago. I realize (now) that they are much lower amperage than the ones from V1E……… Question: can these be used at all by changeing values in the configuration file or is it just a lot easier to get a pair of steppers from Ryan ?

Thanks

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Maybe. The issue is that the coils on these are wildly higher resistance, so when trying to drive these to any given current setpoint, your drivers are going to saturate on if they work at all.

Ryan’s:

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image1920×534 74.2 KB

The Adafruit ones:

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image2208×496 138 KB

Those are only rated for 350mA of current MAX.

In your config.yaml, you should find the sections that set the current and put them well below the maximum rated current of your steppers.
I don’t know what the defaults were for your board, but a sample is shown below of what that section looks like.

My advice is to start somewhere around 0.250 and re-test with those.

Let us know how this goes…

    run_amps: 0.700
    hold_amps: 0.700
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3

I have run a zenxy on 100mA before. It really doesn’t need a lot of current. I would start at 0.100 and make sure they aren’t hot, then bump it upto .200 or 0.250 and check them again. You definitely want to stay under 50C so the plastic doesn’t deform.

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