budget diy cnc controller question

[magicniner]

Make your own enclosure and use a breakout board and individual axis drivers - buy a spare axis driver, test them all and when everything's working rotate your spare occasionally. That way you have a spare when an axis fails on Sunday morning ;-)
Building all the mechanics first is a given, you can get it all working without steppers and add the electrics afterwards.
Regards,
Nick

[Davek0974]

High Integrated 4Axis Professional TB6600HG CNC Router Lathe Stepping Driver Set | eBay

Just popped on ebay and this tb6600 is the one id like to know about. Has anyone used it? Does it do what it says on the tin? If i remember correctly I am hoping to use nema 23 motors 566oz 4nm 4a the specs say it will work so just hoping for someone to tell me its not to good to be true

I thought I'd chime in with the voice of inexperience I am building my first CNC plasma table, a small unit 600mm square, I too looked at those all-in-one's but aborted the thought as I had a feeling I would be blowing a few drives due to lack of experience etc. Then I went and bought a set of three drives and a breakout board from ebay, the drives had TB6600 chips on them as in the all-in-one's.

After a day playing around, one of the drives went pop for no reason at all. I did some research and it seems TB6600 chips are crap at any reasonable current, I was running 36v/4.2A and they get *Very* hot which is likely why it failed.

I then bought a different drive, ebay again, different chip, but after messing with it for a day it didn't want to talk to the cheap breakout board

In the end I returned the whole lot of cheap crap and spent 3 times as much at CNC4YOU.co.uk, on three drives and a decent board. Their phone service is second to none and delivery was next morning, can't speak high enough about them

Being a small machine meant i could get away with not worrying too much about mass etc, this has been proved now as I can tune the drives to stupid speeds way beyond plasma usage and it still runs perfectly, on a big machine though I would have been more concerned.

Make your own enclosure and use a breakout board and individual axis drivers. Building all the mechanics first is a given, you can get it all working without steppers and add the electrics afterwards.
Regards,
Nick

Yes but bear in mind how the drive will be transmitted to each axis, my little build went through several "oh bum" moments followed by plan-changing and head scratching when realising that what i wanted was not possible