Quote Originally Posted by andy0202 View Post
Some great comments guys thanks for the replies.

It looks like the leadshine drives work out much cheaper too. For what its worth is it better to go for the 856 over the 556 (up to 80V)?

They also have these on the bay for around £60. Is there a fake drive market out there to be aware of or can I rest easy they will be ok?

Andy
Can only comment thru personal experience on the AM882 from Zapp
Zapp Automation Ltd - Stepper motors & Stepper Motor Drivers - Servo motors and Servo Motor Drivers - Ballscrews & linear motion products. : AM882 Digital driver with stall detect [AM882 Digital driver] - £98.40

80V and 8.2A so plenty of overhead for future expansion plus using lower powered motors the drive is no where near being taxed so life expectancy will be longer.

These drives are very very nice and if your thinking to slave motors then they have a very nice anti stall feature.?
Above 300rpm they attempt to avoid stalling but better than that for slaved motors is that if one of the motors does stall or lose position above the set tolerance level the drive can output a signal. Which if wired thru the E-stop system or into an input the control software monitors the slaved motors can be stopped almost instantly in a controlled manner so no damage or racking occurs.
Very very handy for slaved motors and works very much like a servo system would regards position loss. With steppers it's very rare for them to lose position or stall below 300rpm but above 300 and higher when torque is dropping then it's very common so this system is great improvement and nice safeguard for slaved Axis.