I'm upgrading my old machine in nearly every area (not yet complete but getting close to operational) and this includes twin X axis steppers rather than one central one.

To do this I bought an M542 type driver to hook up as a slave for the second X axis. The main board is a system3 all-in-one so everything needs to be run at 26v, otherwise I start to get lost steps.

I think initially this will all be fine and I intend to run it like this for a while, but on the odd occasion on the old machine I was limited by the speed and torque of the system. I've also developed an interest for machining more aluminium so am sure I will upgrade the electrics later this year by keeping the new M542 and selling the system3 all-in-one board. So my questions are for that upgrade:

1. The new M542 is rated at 48v which will be a big increase in torque over 26v - however, the manual suggests 36v is typical which seems like only a small improvement for the investment. What are people's experience of running at close to 48v on these drivers? For about £90 I can get a 5 axis breakout board, 48v power supply, and another 3 M542 drivers to create a 48v complete 4-axis system. But I only want to do this if I can get a reasonable performance gain (more like 48v than 36v).

2. If the real peformance of the M542 is 36v than I'd be tempted to buy 3off ~60v drivers (M752 etc.), and a 60v power supply, leaving the Z axis on the existing M542 at 26v (or I could turn this up to about 32v). In principle is it OK to run X1,X2, and Y on 60v and run the Z driver on 26v? Are they independant electrically?

Thank you