G3D stepper drivers availability UK? Was after some of these but the seller links are no good for me. The Gadgets3D site a) doesn't work properly (checkout gives a json error if you specify a different delivery address) and b) charges 25 euros delivery! The others are meh. https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,466709#msg-466709 Thu, 05 Mar 2026 21:09:51 -0500 Phorum 5.2.23 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,474832#msg-474832 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,474832#msg-474832 paulnd General Mon, 23 Feb 2015 17:43:06 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,474800#msg-474800 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,474800#msg-474800
They arrive flat, i.e. with the strips of pins waiting to be soldered. Soldering them on isn't tricky. I have a spare Ramps board so I pushed the pins in there, sat the board on top and soldered away.

Remember the chip faces DOWNWARD.

When you put it in the ramps (or what ever you're using) they go in the opposite way to "normal" drivers. Basically before you plug them in, compare where gnd pin is.

In the videos the guy cuts off the pins for CFG1,2,3. I've done that on half of them, but for some reason it stuffed up one. I don't have any idea why. I probably should of experiemented to find out why.

Either way, initially I just plugged them and "generally" they worked.

I'm going to experiment with changing the mode from the default (which is silentstep) to a slightly different mode. The silent step mode has some expectations about how long the motor will be at rest before receiving a signal, which I have no idea if it does, Also the guy in the videos recommends this mode.

The connection is litterally just soldering a wire from the CFG1 pin to the GND pin which are both clearly labelled.

So far, that's the full extent of my knowledge :/]]> UkIan General Mon, 23 Feb 2015 16:12:01 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,474469#msg-474469 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,474469#msg-474469
I'm expecting my TMC 2100 drivers this week and will be very grateful for any other tips or even a guide on installing them please?

Paul]]> paulnd General Mon, 23 Feb 2015 07:19:27 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,471727#msg-471727 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,471727#msg-471727 UkIan General Tue, 17 Feb 2015 01:12:36 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,471657#msg-471657 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,471657#msg-471657
Right now for PSU I have a Hitachi 400 something hooked up to my printer, I drilled a big hole in the casing and placed an 80mm fan on it, just blows inside to cool it down. The thing is that I have hooked it up with long wires so the PSU is placed under my table, I don't hear it, see it, don't feel it etc. The only sound is from the two 60mm fans blowing on the Ramps and the 40mm fan blowing on the hotend insulator.

On my laser cutter I have the same kind of PSU as you do, a led rail PSU, works well, and I know what you mean with that it turns on all of a sudden. The first time I got scared like 'What the hell is that sound!!!' so I opened up the machine quickly only to find out it was the internal fan blowing on the PSU. I think that with a small 30mm or 25mm fan you might be able to provide enough airflow through the PSU to cool it down permanently and not trigger the internal fan that makes way more noise. You can also try to replace the PSU's internal fan with a quieter one, they don't put anything good in there and some cooling fan producers have really silent fans, with the only downside: pricing.]]> Ohmarinus General Mon, 16 Feb 2015 18:30:48 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,471509#msg-471509 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,471509#msg-471509
Either way it changes the whole game on its head. The only things I've got left to shut up are the fan on the E3D hot end I'm using at the moment. I'm not sure if it's the fan or the mounting or both. If anyone is using a V6 E3D, glue some strips of felt inside the fan mount for a much improved experience. It's still not perfect though.

And my power supply is one of those LED light ones. It's silence until it needs to turn on its fan, but when on it's quite noisy, so might investigate an enclosure or perhaps a different PSU.

I really should stop bogging around on this printer and finish the other one :/]]> UkIan General Mon, 16 Feb 2015 14:39:45 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,471135#msg-471135 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,471135#msg-471135 Ohmarinus General Sun, 15 Feb 2015 18:17:04 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,471079#msg-471079 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,471079#msg-471079
There are three cfg pins, which technically should all be open. Initially I left the pins connected, so they just plugged into the ramps on the assumption that if they're not used, then all's good. Read on for where they got cut and the bother this caused.

I've switched the axes over one at a time. Makes like easier.

So Y was first as that was noisy. Simple swap in no problems.

Z was next, this was also fine, except the microstepping is configured differently and I had 8 microsteps, so I had to put that to 16 in firmware. No biggie.

X was not so straight forward. Plugging in and it moved the X axis at 4 times the speed it should which suggests cfg 1 or 2 (there's a chart in the datasheet, I forget exactly) was for some reason hot. So I cut off the three cfg pins and it worked fine. Yay

Then I fried the Y axis. Took a while to figure out, I had put the heatsink on and it was shorting some pins. Only indiciation there was a problem was a weird uber high pitch whine from the motor sometimes. After I fixed the pins it stopped working so I binned it.

Next I thought I'd remove the cfg pins from the Y and Z. This was a mistake. Y actually works fine. Z stopped going down. I.e. I could make it go up, but down would actually lock up the motor until reboot. I replaced that one with another with the cfg pins on. No idea what was happening there. Could of been faulty.

Only other thing I noticed, I had the Y voltage a bit low at one point and while it drove smoothly, it started moving with a jolt. Just added some extra juice and it was fine.

So, still some things to figure out, but with brute force I've got them all worked.

I also replaced the two 40mm fans on my ramps with one 60mm. Less air flow, but enough and it doesn't vibrate or make any noise. Finally removed the dedicated fan I had on the Y axis motor. It's not needed any more. So it's all sooo quite now. It's scary quiet I don't know it's printing sometimes :)]]> UkIan General Sun, 15 Feb 2015 15:13:54 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,469547#msg-469547 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,469547#msg-469547
I can also just reverse the plugs on the ramps :) (instead of reversing in firmware).

First of all, I will wait till you have more experience with the drivers. They sound very very silent in your 2nd video !]]> Ohmarinus General Wed, 11 Feb 2015 18:30:43 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,469461#msg-469461 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,469461#msg-469461
Quote
Ohmarinus
Curious, so they are a 'drop in' replacement?

Yes and no.

Yes, but I had to configure Marlin to invert the axis that was being driven. So far I've only done Z and Y, both had to be inverted (no idea why I thought just one would, but there you go).

Second, it doesn't honour the microstep setting on the RAMPS. So my Z axis used to be set to 8X microsteps, but this is ignored by the board and it just did 16 anyway. Again, I just changed the Marlin config with the correct steps per mm.

You can configure the stepping, but you need to do it with the cfg pins and bits of wire. You can configure various other settings like that, but I'm just taking the default which is 16X steps interpolated to 256 in QuietChop (IIRC) mode. In which case it's slot in compatible.

On the video the Tom guy had removed the three pins connected to CFG. I haven't done that, so theoretically I could get weird behavior if those pins are doing anything. I should probably check. So far, they're not though.

One final thing. They all arrived tuned to the maximum voltage which needed to be trimmed down a lot. There was actually a bit of whine at the maximum voltage, which I interpretted as screams :/]]> UkIan General Wed, 11 Feb 2015 14:49:42 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,469398#msg-469398 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,469398#msg-469398 Ohmarinus General Wed, 11 Feb 2015 13:17:21 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,468963#msg-468963 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,468963#msg-468963
Two awful videos, my phone didn't do a good job:

Noisy

not noisy

It doesn't do it justice though. My Y axis was screaming before, now it is silent.

So, some weirdness though.

First, they go in back to front AND upside down. Here is the one I soldered up next to the old driver. As you can see (or not) it is in the default silent configuration, not the mode that Tom recommended).

Second, when I plugged it in, the Y axis is now reversed, so I just changed that in Marlin and it seems ok. Just doing a print to see if everything is mirrored or not, looks ok.

[attachment 49002 drivers.jpg]

Yay for silence!]]> UkIan General Tue, 10 Feb 2015 16:15:36 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,468509#msg-468509 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,468509#msg-468509 page for the chip itself. See, I'm learning :) It has some useful information and I think I should be able to map their BOB board to the Watterot ones?]]> UkIan General Mon, 09 Feb 2015 16:43:55 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,468448#msg-468448 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,468448#msg-468448
So in simple terms, what do I need to connect to implement Tom's preferred stepping mode? Url set to where he discusses it on the first video.

Keep it real simple. I don't even know if the jumper wire would go on the top or the bottom (or if the top is the bottom now they go in upside down!).

:)]]> UkIan General Mon, 09 Feb 2015 14:07:59 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,468403#msg-468403 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,468403#msg-468403
Quote
plankton
Look at the video ("Tom's Update") linked from the Github page

Hehe, Tom's just talking. Afraid to put it in his machine? ;)]]> Ohmarinus General Mon, 09 Feb 2015 12:50:34 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,468375#msg-468375 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,468375#msg-468375 Github page]]> plankton General Mon, 09 Feb 2015 11:47:00 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,468358#msg-468358 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,468358#msg-468358
Quote
Traumflug

c) TMC2100 based Pololus got very good reviews recently: [www.watterott.com]

They arrived and they're flat packed. Do I just solder the connecting strips on, or do the three holes at the front need anything? Also, in the third picture, it seems to be upside down in the board... Is that right? How do you cool the thing?]]> UkIan General Mon, 09 Feb 2015 11:18:18 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,466783#msg-466783 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,466783#msg-466783
Quote
Traumflug
a) tell them, likely they don't read this forum

b) use the delivery address as invoice address

c) TMC2100 based Pololus got very good reviews recently: [www.watterott.com]

That was easy. bucket o chips ordered :)]]> UkIan General Fri, 06 Feb 2015 05:36:35 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,466779#msg-466779 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,466779#msg-466779
Cheers guys, I'll try the SilentStepStick from Wetterott as well. Might be a better alternative actually as I questioned the sanity of having a second dial just to have to turn it always to 0 :/]]> UkIan General Fri, 06 Feb 2015 05:31:56 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,466767#msg-466767 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,466767#msg-466767
b) use the delivery address as invoice address

c) TMC2100 based Pololus got very good reviews recently: [www.watterott.com]]]> Traumflug General Fri, 06 Feb 2015 05:10:20 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,466745#msg-466745 Re: G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,466745#msg-466745 spherelance General Fri, 06 Feb 2015 04:20:42 -0500 https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,466709#msg-466709 G3D stepper drivers availability UK? https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?1,466709,466709#msg-466709 these but the seller links are no good for me. The Gadgets3D site a) doesn't work properly (checkout gives a json error if you specify a different delivery address) and b) charges 25 euros delivery! The others are meh.]]> UkIan General Fri, 06 Feb 2015 02:34:32 -0500