Quote Originally Posted by the great waldo View Post
I'm always glad to hear of someones own experience of an electronic piece of equipment. My cnc machine is going to be mainly used for carving wood, guitar making etc. Is the improvement in a closed loop system worth the upgrade?
Yes, there is a difference compared to a standard stepper, esp when doing 3D type work with lots of fast small movements as the closed-loop system ensures position with fast direction changes.

I've used about 12 sets now of closed-loop systems from different manufacturers and varying sizes from 2Nm nema23 to 12Nm nema 34 and all of them perform better than standard stepper system. Basicly just a little bit stronger, little smoother and in general feel more reliable.


However,Like wise I've built Dozens of machines using standard stepper systems without any problems. So if you have sized the motors/drives/voltage correctly for the size of your machine and left enough power for when running at higher feeds then you won't have issues.
Personaly because you already have the parts, provided they are sized correctly then I wouldn't have any qualms using them at all.

If you were buying from scratch then I'd Say get Closed-loop everytime because the difference is price isn't so great now and the extra cost is worth it.