Arduino CNC Shield Power Routing

[Desertboy]

The problem with CNC machining, is it usually requires far faster and more accurate motion than 3D printing, and an Arduino is not really up to the task.
Even an ARM processor isn't ideal, as getting jitter free motion needs good clock scaling, which can be handled far better in an FPGA, which is why you'll find nearly all CNC motion controllers use an FPGA for motion generation, often paired with some form of microprocessor which handles communication and the maths for generating the motion paths, before passing the required motion to the FPGA.
LinuxCNC and Mach running via a parallel port also have the same issue, however they ultimately rely on using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, by throwing enough processing power at the problem, you can get it to work well enough it's not a problem.

And then you have the available hardware. Nearly all shields I'm sure have been designed with 3D printing in mind, where speed and acceleration requirements aren't that great, so 24V is acceptable. If you were to use those same speeds on any reasonably sized router or mill, it would be painfully slow.
Hardware really is a case of, you get what you pay for.

The CNCshield is designed for grbl which is cnc router firmware not 3d printing! It can pass up to 36v to steppers (It's designed for a hobby machine after all) but if you need 60v to the drivers you can do that easily as well. Most people use cheap ass Polou steppers which are not suitable for 36v but you can get a lsightly more expensive driver than will push 36v fine or wire a real driver to replace the cheap chip drivers the cncshield is designed to take on board.

Of course it's not as good as much more expensive solutions but it's very powerful for the price (£25 including 4 stepper drivers!) and not as useless as you might think but I will move to a breakout board solution relatively soon I consider it the least essential purchase right now in getting the thing built and cutting.

Ardunio and cncshield are also very good for testing nema's so when I do upgrade I will have a simple test bed for the recovered motor's I collect.

grbl is very stable these days, maybe not the quickest of course but they are rock solid stable.

"The controller is written in highly optimized C utilizing every clever feature of the AVR-chips to achieve precise timing and asynchronous operation. It is able to maintain up to 30kHz of stable, jitter free control pulses."