Prusa Electronics Advice

Hello, I'm just in the process buying all the parts required to make my own printer and after a bit of research I decide that I want to make the Prusa.

My only concern with the Prusa is that It uses 5 Stepper motors rather than the standard 4 which mean that the majority of the mother boards in the wilds are design as such.
Does anybody have any recommendations on the electronics?

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Ronald A N Sousa MEng
Mechatronic Engineer
www.hashdefineelectronics.com

You can use ANY of the electronics, the two steppers can be connected in parallel.

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Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse

Ah right. Just need to make sure that the H-bride used can handle the extra load. Thank you Bob

If it can't handle the current wire them in series. It will work, but be slower.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

A trick used when hooking motors up in series is tying the A+ A leads and B- B+ together and seeing if rotating one motor causes the other motor to rotate in the same direction. Parallel does go faster because more current flows into the motors. I'm not going to get into the theoretical ruckus about it. Parallel somehow works, serial does as well. It all comes down to does it do what you need it too?

Thank guys that make sense.

In series, due to internal resistance of the motors and potentially the current limiter of the H-bridge, the maximum current is split between the two motor and therefore the winding will take longer to energize. Where in parallel either by running each each motor with there own H-bridge or shared h-bridge then each motor can draw there required current and therefore energize faster.

Considering that both motors are used to drive the Z axis, that speed wont be a huge problem and by buying any of the recommended mother board will do the job.
That said I've been thinking about buying the Gen6 board from mendel-parts but the price does seem quite steep (€180.91 ~£162.01). Does anyone know where I could get my hands on one cheaper or something similar.

[www.mendel-parts.com]

I'm in the UK

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Ronald A N Sousa MEng
Mechatronic Engineer
www.hashdefineelectronics.com