Anything about the Dm542t or Dm542a???

Hello! I've been really interested in buying one of these for my cnc. I've seen a lot of people using it and it seems that it's a really reliable stepper driver. Now I got a few questions, first off, does anyone recommend it and are there any superior specs that make it particularly outstanding (would you recommend something else)? Is there a difference between the "t" model and the "a" model? And is there any reliable distributors one would recommend?(reason being, I impulsively bought 3 of the dm542t from a sketchy distributor and had to get a refund from Amazon).

Thanks so much in advance!!!

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I used DM542 drivers for a few years in an old machine and they worked OK. Be aware they are limited to 50V max though so are an entry level driver. The ones I used were analogue.

Reading the specs suggest the DM542A is analogue and the DM542T is digital with anti-resonance features, otherwise I can't see much difference. If this is the case then the DM542T is a better driver and there looks to be only a few dollars between them.

Do you know what sort of machine it is for because you get much better performance from 80V drivers.

The machine was homemade, it's a router and I really only intended to use it for woods and plastic machining (no metals). It's about 4 feet by 2 feet, and has 3 open loop Nema 23 stepper motors running at 3 amps. To put it into perspective, up until now, I was using a 3 axis tb6560 driver (which isn't very good performance at all), but then I accidentally overloaded it and burnt out the driver. So now I'm looking for a decently priced driver that has good potential in it's precision, but high speed isn't necessarily too important.

That kind of triggered a new question though, what should I consider if I were looking for strength and speed in a stepper motor? I'm assuming voltage is a leading factor (higher the voltage ratings on the driver=faster??) but is that true and is there anything else?


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Well 542 will be a step up from TB boards and 50V gives a fair performance. Next step up is 80V and lots of builds end up here but you would need 80V drivers

Motors don’t run faster at higher voltage (you control the speed with the feedrate) but they run out of torque at lower voltages which limits the range they run up to without missing steps.

To help with this you run at higher voltage and to help further you need motors with lower inductance. 3mH or less is recommended. Inductance is resistance with phase (someone correct me). That is why we don’t recommend kits as the motors can be high inductance.