Help choosing drivers

[sambo2]

Right, I've been window shopping and can't find many places selling EM806 drivers in this country. Zapp has 1 in stock and Motion want £150 each which seems a bit steep at 50% more than Zapp. I also can't find anywhere in the uk to buy the AM882, theres some on eBay for about 50 quid from China but i'd prefer to get from the uk if possible.
Do people usually import or are there more uk suppliers?

What's the consensus on the cnc4you nema 23's at 4Nm too? They seem fairly low impedance but are there better?

[Clive S]

Right, I've been window shopping and can't find many places selling EM806 drivers in this country. Zapp has 1 in stock and Motion want £150 each which seems a bit steep at 50% more than Zapp. I also can't find anywhere in the uk to buy the AM882, theres some on eBay for about 50 quid from China but i'd prefer to get from the uk if possible.
Do people usually import or are there more uk suppliers?

What's the consensus on the cnc4you nema 23's at 4Nm too? They seem fairly low impedance but are there better?

cnc4you is a good place to buy the motors. Zap has them as well.

I would go for the 23's 3.1Nm. I have them running on my Warco WM18 mill that I converted.

I have never had any problems buying the drives from China and will save you a lot of cash. the AM882 is the earlier model of the EM806 but are proven and very good drives.

Have you thought about a motion controller? or are you going down the P.P. route

[sambo2]

Thanks Clive. Out of interest, what pulley ratio are you using with those steppers?

I've not decided yet. I've read PP can be better for Mach which I will be using, I'd need to get a PP card for my pc but they seem cheap enough on ebay. I'm also on 64 bit but I can load a 32 bit OS if needed. This looks the cheapest way as the PP break out boards are less than a motion controller.
On the flip side, are there any reasonably priced motion controllers? Things like the smooth stepper seem to cost a fortune.

[JAZZCNC]

I've not decided yet. I've read PP can be better for Mach which I will be using,

Well who ever wrote that is talking rubbish or more likely they never used an external motion controller. Night and Day difference between them.

If you want cheap but good External controller then Pokeys 57cnc is great little board and uses Ethernet which is much better than USB. To be fair most of the current main stream lower end motion controllers like Pokeys, UC100 or UC300, Pmdx 411 are ok and far better than PP.

Regards the drives then don't be afraid of buying AM882 from China I've bought 100's and not had one faulty or problem.

If you go with Nema 34 larger than 6Nm then go with High voltage mains drives.