Leadshine Digital drives bulk purchase

While looking for some good priced drives I found these guys:

New Leadshine AM882 Stepper Drive Stepping Motor Driver 80V 8.2A with Sensorless Detection #SM414 @SD-in Motor Driver from Industry & Business on Aliexpress.com

The price per drive & postage comes down if you buy 5 or more and works out at £54 each delivered. (not including getting stung by customs etc) The problem is I don't need 5 but I do like the idea of saving 30-40 quid a pop on the price...

Would anybody that is planning to build a machine be interested in doing a bulk purchase with me sometime in the next couple of months? I would be happy to let one of the more established members of the site place the order if anyone has issues with handing over their pennies to the new guy.

i'd like to say me but i aint got a clue what drivers i need just yet, when u come closer to needing them give me a shout and i'll hopefully have got to this stage by then

These are massively overpowered for what I need but apparently running the drivers well under maximum capacity is a good thing and digital drives also seem to be much, much better than the old analogue ones.

For the price they seem worth going for unless someone is about to tell me they are terrible. :)

i'll be honest with you though i didnt think i was going to be spending that much if thats price per drive and i need 3 of them

I'm interested, I was planning on using Leadshine digitals and any saving is most welcome. It might be a bit earlier than I planed but seems like a real good idea. Keep me in mind when you place the order.

Its a good price, and almost half of what I paid for mine from Zapp. But I'd rather have his support if anything went wrong with these drives, and from other threads on here, can be tricky to setup.

If they are genuine leadshine drives then it's a good price but as I have already said there are so many people selling clones that I would only buy from a recommended source

If they're genuine then I'm interested.

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Originally Posted by Wobblycogs

If they're genuine then I'm interested.

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+1.....................

Any idea how we tell in advance if they are genuine or not?

That's the problem DC items are cloned right down to the labels & where they go so just by looking it's impossible to tell. That's the reason I will only buy from sellers who have been recommended to me by people who have actually used them.

Have you had any contact with this seller yourself yet?

I've not had any contact with the seller but they do seem to have a fair amount of cnc stuff for sale and good feedback, including on those drives.

Does anyone have a link to a 'woe is me and my fake leadshine drives!' thread? I've looked around all the usual places and can only find this thread and another one on here where someone claims that Gary from Zapp had said there were fakes on the market.

If I search for reports of problems with the TB6560's the issues become apparent very quickly but can't find any firsthand experience of the problem of fake leadshine drives.

Edit to add:

Looking for fake leadshine drives you do find quite a few bits of information claiming that Chinese companies rip off the IP of American companies, like this pdf from 2006:

http://ftp.cnchungary.com/Varsanyi_P...DB810_copy.pdf

Even if it is a copy, that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad - it might be a good copy...certainly worth trying in my opinion.

Have you seen the fake Apple store(s) that China has? Unless you were one of the real store designers you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I don't know if the stuff they are selling is fake as well but judging by the lengths they have gone to copy the look I'd guess at least some products are fake too.

Getting back to the drivers though, I find it slightly suspicious that there are only three purchases of those drivers in the last 6 months and all were from Russia. I'd rather see a better purchase history.

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Originally Posted by Jonathan

Even if it is a copy, that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad - it might be a good copy...certainly worth trying in my opinion.

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No disrespect Jonathan but some of us don't have the money to gamble like that. They may be genuine & a great buy but if they turn out to be a pile of junk then that would be money I couldn't afford to lose personally.

Biggest problem with feedback on any site is that it is generally posted instantly & if the customer has a problem a week or two latter there is no way to change the feedback that has been placed. Yes they may be able to get their money back or the item replaced through paypal or the seller if it's a genuine seller but if they get nothing back there is no way to alter the feedback given or update it. Sorry if I sound a bit paranoid about this but I have had problems with a certain auction site & also know lots of other people who have as well. Yes I do miss out on the odd bargain now but at least I haven't wasted any more money which is generally in short supply.

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Originally Posted by martin54

No disrespect Jonathan but some of us don't have the money to gamble like that.

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Nor do I. But unlike 'a certain auction site' aliexpress uses an escrow system so that you have a chance to thoroughly test the item before releasing payment.

So far nobody here has shown that these drivers are fake, or indeed that there are fake drivers around. Secondly, if there are fake drivers then given the number of people, myself included, who have bought them from China, wouldn't we be hearing problems from them? How many threads are there about drivers broken due to a manufacturing defect?

If they're such bad copies that they fail within a few days, then you can get your money back. If they fail after a few months, then there's not much chance of a refund - but that's the chance you take buying anything in China, regardless of if it is genuine or not. So the question is, are these more likely to fail than the ones from England? Since we have no evidence to show that they are fake (it's from China so it's probably fake doesn't count, it's argument ad homenium), I see no reason not to get them since the risk is no greater than buying anything I would normally buy in China.

Instead of speculating, perhaps inquire with leadshine as to whether they think those drives are fake? Or maybe in the unlikely event that you do buy some (your mind seems pretty made up) perhaps at the same time buy a genuine drive, run a motor from it and simultaneously another from a questionable drive, and see if the questionable one runs any hotter? Fake MOSFETs are abundant in China, including models I have seen used in stepper drivers (e.g. IRF540), so a fake driver is likely to use these to save money. The fake components have reduced performance characteristics (which leads to reduced lifetime) and causes them to run hotter in the same operating conditions, so the temperature difference should show up immediately. Ultimately if they are going to fail after a few months then it will very likely be due to a thermal issue. In addition if you're using the driver with Nema 23 motors then since the current will be set to around half the rating the heat dissipation will be substantially less than it is designed for.

So far I have not had to return any of the drivers I bought from a Chinese company and for what it's worth, the drivers and spindle I bought from aliexpress work just fine.

i have got to agree with jonathan... its a calculated gamble but sights like aliexpress alibaba have opened the door for us "little" people to get closer to the "supplier" and save money
I bought six digital drivers and had to bite my nails a tad until i had them up and running
we make a choice and sometimes we win and in my experience every now and again we lose

Ok so being honest I didn't know how the payment system on Aiexpress worked & having had that cleared up seems like you have a lot more protection than I thought you had. Only ever used the well known auction site as Jonathan puts it.
I'm not a member of the anything Chinese is either a copy or complete rubbish brigade as I have already said but as I have already said the biggest problem is knowing who to buy from. I wouldn't have bought Chai if I had just come across him myself BUT having read all the recommendations on hear about the service & prices I will quite happily buy from him when I need to.

Jonathon, I don't even know if fake leadshine drives exist so maybe I am being a bit negative on this but I do know that it's not just western goods that are now being copied & have come across vinyl plotters that have been copied. Looking at the Aliexpress feedback for this seller they don't seem to have sold many of these drives which surprises me if they are that good. I haven't made my mind up yet lol, just wanted to know a bit more about the seller & see if anyone had already bought from them.

And yet even then you are still taking a risk.

Here is a person on cnczone slating chai utterly after his experience ordering from linearmotionbearings.
Positive experience purchasing linear rails and drivescrews - CNCzone.com-The Largest Machinist Community on the net!

Do you listen to the dozens of positive experiences and go with chai or the negative experience and decide chai is a shyster? Buying stuff from anywhere is always a gamble, but then so is crossing the road...

DC your right there is always a risk but if you can mininise the risk then surely that has to be a good thing. If I am crossing the road yes I could get knocked down but if I look both ways first I stand less chance of getting knocked down.
To answer your question I would be more likely to go with the dozens of positive experiences for a couple of reasons, there are many happy customers from what I have read not just on this forum but others & very little negative reports. Plus some of the positive comments come from people who I have spoken to either via a forum or in person so have a bit more trust in. I know nothing of the guy who posted a negative comment so can't say anything about his experience.
Like I said in the other post maybe I'm just a bit to careful but that is mainly down to past experiences of life in general.

Well I've had plenty of experience with buying from China and I can honestly say I've had very little to complain about and I'm 1000's of pound in front compared to buying in EU so that said I'm up for it D.C.

I will need some soon so let me know. If not then I don't mind being the guinea pig.!!

See that makes it a lot better because if things go pear shaped I can now blame Jazz for leading me astray lol

Splendid, that answers the question WWJJD... and they would both try it!

Count me in for 3 units D.C.

Worst case there will be a few of us to give negative feedback.

Before lots folks get too excited it needs to be pointed out that the £56 delivered is not what they will actually cost.?
There will be 20% VAT on top plus a handling Fee from the shipping company anywhere between £10-20 for the whole shipment. So I reckon they will workout around £68-70 mark.
Still cheaper than from China thru Ebay or Other Uk sources but just not has cheap as many maybe where thinking.???

I'm still game thou.!!

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Originally Posted by JAZZCNC

Before lots folks get too excited it needs to be pointed out that the £56 delivered is not what they will actually cost.?
There will be 20% VAT on top plus a handling Fee from the shipping company anywhere between £10-20 for the whole shipment. So I reckon they will workout around £68-70 mark.
Still cheaper than from China thru Ebay or Other Uk sources but just not has cheap as many maybe where thinking.???

I'm still game thou.!!

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so how does import duty work then Jazz? You have mentioned 20% vat but what about import duty? is that added as well or is the vat in place of that? I know sellers have put a low value on items for people but surely that can't be the case if the payment is help by escrow until the customer is happy for them to release it.

I knew you would see the light :encouragement:

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Originally Posted by WandrinAndy

Worst case there will be a few of us to give negative feedback.

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There will be one as it's a group buy ...

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Originally Posted by martin54

so how does import duty work

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You get charged 20% of the value stated on the customs form (which may of course be less than you paid, or more if you're unlucky) plus a £10 handling fee to maximise FedEx executive bonuses :wink:. Import duty is something separate that only applies for higher value items:
https://www.gov.uk/importing-and-exporting-by-post

So we can expect them to cost at most 20% more plus £10 divided by the whole shipment, or if you're lucky it could be less. For example I bought a spindle from aliexpress for $493 (not a normal spindle) and didn't get charged as the seller decided to put an exceptionally low value on the shipment!

There will of course be postage to pay to distribute them once they get here, but they are not very large or heavy so it won't be much.

Jazz has kindly offered to place the order so nobody has to hand over their cash to dodgy new bloke. :)

I was budgeting £60 a drive plus postage for my drives from cnc4you so this makes sense for me, the leadshine digital drives are vastly superior to the ones I was going to get for almost the same amount of money.

I might be teaching my granny to suck eggs here but...

I took part in group buy on another forum, the guy running it set up a publicly readable Google Docs spreadsheet showing what everyone wanted and how much it would cost. It worked really well as a way of organizing everyone (there were about 20 purchasers in the end) and keeping track of who'd paid / when things had been shipped etc. Might be worth doing the same here now that there's a growing number of us wanting drives.

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Originally Posted by D.C.

I was budgeting £60 a drive plus postage for my drives from cnc4you so this makes sense for me, the leadshine digital drives are vastly superior to the ones I was going to get for almost the same amount of money.

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These are certainly better drivers, but bear in mind you can get perfectly good drivers for a lot less on aliexpress:

Best Selling! Wantai 3 PCS Stepper Motor Driver DQ860MA 24 80VDC 8.2A 256Micro CNC Router Plasma Laser Engraving Foam Grind-in Motor Driver from Industry & Business on Aliexpress.com

Whilst it is of course nice to have the latest technology, if your machine will run perfectly well with the cheaper drivers I see no reason not to get those. I've had 8 of them and not had any problems.

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Originally Posted by D.C.

Jazz has kindly offered to place the order so nobody has to hand over their cash to dodgy new bloke. :)

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Only thing I would worry about if you were to place the order D.C. is that it might arrive encased in self-levelled epoxy ;-)

Jazz will have a good idea whether they are the real McCoy or not.... Naturally without prejudice.

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Originally Posted by WandrinAndy

Only thing I would worry about if you were to place the order D.C. is that it might arrive encased in self-levelled epoxy ;-)

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Ha! It would have to be cast arcylic for the leadshines...

Attachment 7363Attachment 7362

MAKE | The Most Beautiful Homemade Device I’ve Ever Seen

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Originally Posted by D.C.

Jazz has kindly offered to place the order ...

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I've never been part of a bulk buy before so not sure what I need to do.

Jazz, when the time comes please count me in for 3 drivers... and shout how much and how to pay (Paypal?).

Cheers,
Andy

I'm afraid I can't take part this time :(