Quote Originally Posted by JAZZCNC View Post
The 3DM2283T will certainly do the job but it's most likely massive overkill for what you are doing which might not a positive thing.?. I say most likely because I'd need to know more about the spec of Motor you have to be 100% sure, Size, inductance etc.

Here's why it might not be a positive thing.! The DM2282T you have already and the 3DM2283T are High voltage drives which you only really need with very large motors or very High inductance motors.
They are kind of drive I would fit on a Router with Large Nema 34 motors in the 10Nm to 15Nm range which is required to spin at the highest speed possible and still provide strong torque at higher RPM. You won't need speed for this application or High torque at high RPM I would presume.

For a Lower size Nema 34 motors ie: 4Nm to 8Nm range with low to medium inductance then they may get too hot if you run them at 230v Mains voltage which I presume you are going to do as I don't see any transformers on your list.!
The heat will make the motors run rough and eventually over time slowly get rougher until they kill the motors altogether.

Again without knowing the full spec of the motors and the weights you are shifting it's difficult to be accurate but I've got a fair bit of camera equipment my self with large heavy lenses etc and I can't imagine any situation where a 4Nm or 6Nm NEMA 34 motor on a linear stage with a ball screw would require more than 80Vdc. To be honest even a Nema 23 with 50 to 60Vdc would easily handle it.

This brings me on to the next thing I see. The 4 x DM542T and the 48V PSU. The DM542T drives are 50Vdc Max voltage and with 48vdc your running very close to the limit, now in this application which will be relatively slow-moving with low inertia you'll probably be ok and get away with it. But if this was a router or fast-moving device with a heavy load and high inertia I'd recommend you went with a low voltage PSU due to the fact a stepper becomes a dynamo when de-accelerating and will dump power back into the drives which can cause them to be damaged. Ideally, you should allow a 10% safety margin on the drives Max voltage, Often these PSU have an adjustment pot which you can use to tune the voltage, if it does I suggest you lower it as a safety precaution.

When it comes to steppers BIGGER isn't always better and it's common for people to fall foul of this and go with large Nema 34 motors. Happens all the time on Milling conversions where they think the little motors can't lift the heavy Milling heads or tables when in reality not only do they do this easily they actually often allow higher feed rates than the larger Nema 34 motors.!
Thanks so much for the detailed reply.

This is the spec of the 3-phase Nema 34 motor I currently have for the slider – Nema 34 motor FM86128SJT03-FSL120.pdf
This is the spec of the 2-phase motors in the rotation stages which are being run by the DM542T drivers - https://www.makeblock.com/project/42byg-stepper-motor

Having looked at the specs of the Nema 34 motor (holding torque 7Nm), it seems like the suggested Driver may be overkill. What would you suggest using instead?

To give you a little more info on this part of the build, the slider will have a pan tilt head attached, sometimes a cinema camera (Red DSMC2, Alexa mini), sometimes a smaller camera, plus a focus motor and some rigging items like camera plates etc. I’d estimate the total weight of this to be 12-16kg depending on the camera, lens etc.

The slider will need to move that weight both horizontally, and vertically.

In terms of wiring, if I’m honest this part has been the most confusing to me. There are loads of resources online for CNC but I didn’t know what was relevant to me and have ended up quite confused after watching loads of YouTube videos. Some seem very simple, just drives, PSU, BOB and controller, others involve all manner of additional items. So, no I wasn’t planning to use a transformer but happy to incorporate one if need be.

Would you recommend getting a different PSU for the 4 x DM542T drivers? Something with a lower 36V like this for example - https://www.omc-stepperonline.com/po...ice&order=DESC

Again, I’m very appreciative of the advice. Wish I’d found this forum earlier. I can probably return some of these items, the larger Driver and PSU and switch them out for other components so hopefully won’t waste much money here.

If you have any other suggestions I’d love to hear them.