Arduino CNC Shield Power Routing

[AcrimoniousMirth]

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."

Well said! I'd like to add that it's even cheaper than £25 now! CNC shield and Arduino UNO coming to about £10-15 total now including the cheap pololus.
I knew I'd be using NEMA23s (part of the limitation of me recycling old bits) so I reused some old DRV8825 drivers which as you say are capable of 24-36V and higher currents, so are suitable for the NEMA23s. Those back in the day would've cost me about £7 so you're right, cheap as dirt for hobbyists :)

[Desertboy]

Well said! I'd like to add that it's even cheaper than £25 now! CNC shield and Arduino UNO coming to about £10-15 total now including the cheap pololus.
I knew I'd be using NEMA23s (part of the limitation of me recycling old bits) so I reused some old DRV8825 drivers which as you say are capable of 24-36V and higher currents, so are suitable for the NEMA23s. Those back in the day would've cost me about £7 so you're right, cheap as dirt for hobbyists :)

I'm going to buy 4 AM882H and a 60v power supply when I finish my build but at moment finishing the Z axis and mounts seem to be more important.

But now you can buy 5*DRV8825 for £7 from china delivered which is crazy.