Quote Originally Posted by martin54 View Post
No disrespect Jonathan but some of us don't have the money to gamble like that.
Nor do I. But unlike 'a certain auction site' aliexpress uses an escrow system so that you have a chance to thoroughly test the item before releasing payment.

So far nobody here has shown that these drivers are fake, or indeed that there are fake drivers around. Secondly, if there are fake drivers then given the number of people, myself included, who have bought them from China, wouldn't we be hearing problems from them? How many threads are there about drivers broken due to a manufacturing defect?

If they're such bad copies that they fail within a few days, then you can get your money back. If they fail after a few months, then there's not much chance of a refund - but that's the chance you take buying anything in China, regardless of if it is genuine or not. So the question is, are these more likely to fail than the ones from England? Since we have no evidence to show that they are fake (it's from China so it's probably fake doesn't count, it's argument ad homenium), I see no reason not to get them since the risk is no greater than buying anything I would normally buy in China.

Instead of speculating, perhaps inquire with leadshine as to whether they think those drives are fake? Or maybe in the unlikely event that you do buy some (your mind seems pretty made up) perhaps at the same time buy a genuine drive, run a motor from it and simultaneously another from a questionable drive, and see if the questionable one runs any hotter? Fake MOSFETs are abundant in China, including models I have seen used in stepper drivers (e.g. IRF540), so a fake driver is likely to use these to save money. The fake components have reduced performance characteristics (which leads to reduced lifetime) and causes them to run hotter in the same operating conditions, so the temperature difference should show up immediately. Ultimately if they are going to fail after a few months then it will very likely be due to a thermal issue. In addition if you're using the driver with Nema 23 motors then since the current will be set to around half the rating the heat dissipation will be substantially less than it is designed for.

So far I have not had to return any of the drivers I bought from a Chinese company and for what it's worth, the drivers and spindle I bought from aliexpress work just fine.