arduino to stepper driver Question

Hello. I have a homemade machine, a hobbycnc pro stepper driver board and power supply, an Arduino Duemilanove, and a macBook Pro. My pc recently died along with my controller software. I'd like to use my mac and arduino to run my machine (and build an extruder). The hobbyCnc stepper driver board takes it's input from a parallel port DB25 plug. Can anyone tell me how/if I can connect the arduino to the hobbycnc stepper board db25 plug?

thanks

sF

Not really. An Arduino talks through various serial ports/protocols, but not parallel. Even if you'd hook up this parallel thing to all the digital I/O pins, you'd need a firmware driving that. And EMC does not run on an Arduino.

Getting another old PC from the junkyard or replacing the stepper drivers with ones from the RepRap collection will be much simpler and cheaper.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

So something like this wouldn't work?

[www.aliexpress.com]

Isn't there a firmware for the arduino duemilanove that could be used? I really just need some way to transmit to the step and direction pins don't I?

thanks again

What you can do is run GRBL on your Arduino Board and make a DB25 adapter so you can interface your step/dir signals from the Arduino to the driver board. Look up the pin designation for the DB25 port on your driver board so you can match them with that of the Arduino(see also GRBL pin mappings).

There's probably more to it than that( Im just summarizing and I have not tried it), and assuming its a CNC you are trying to run( GRBL doesnt have support for extruders).

If its a 3D printer you are trying to run, there are some firmwares that would run on a Duemilanove but that would most likely be outdated.

The one you linked wont work in your intended application, it is used if you have stand alone stepper drivers(and connects directly to a PC with Parallel port)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/08/2012 12:28PM by royco.

GRBL, ok, thank you, I'll look into that