Arduino - Roland PNC 3000 - RAMPS 1.4 - DRV8825

Hi Guys

Very new to this and will sound novice.

I have an old Roland PNC 3000 Milling machine. It is mechanical/Stepper motor sound, but the mother board is gone. Had used it while back, good and accurate machine, but as I said old and outdated.

I have purchased a kit or sort of a kit that has "3D Printer 1x Mega 2560 R3 + 1x RAMPS 1.4 control panel+5pcs DRV8825 for Arduino".

I have looked at the stepper motors and the detail on the back is (2-Phase, 0.9 Deg/Step, 6 Wires, Vexta Oriental Motor, DC 5.4V, 1.5A), does not make a hell of a sense to me, but I am sure to most of you guys it would.

I like to see first if it is possible to combine the both "Machine and the Electronics", I am not very sure as yet what I like to use it as, but maybe a 3D Printer or light Milling Machine,...

I am wondering if someone could help and guide me to a right direction. I have searched the net have some info, but I am not sure where to start or if it is possible or right to do this, using Arduino for example.

I appreciate any help in advance.

Thanks

The reprap wiki has some good info on Stepper Motors and also Stepper Wiring.

As you have probably noticed, your motors have 6 wires and the drivers on the ramps only has 4. If the motors has a model number on them you might be able to google it to find the colour codes of the wires, otherwise you can figure it out manually using a multimeter as outlined in the link above.

One thing to note with the RAMPS is that some kits come with the jumpers installed for the micro-stepping and some do not. Before installing the drivers on the RAMPS just check that all the jumpers are installed for each driver (assuming of course you want to use the 1/32 microstepping of the DRV8825).

On the firmware side you need to set the "Steps per mm" for each axis, if you know the pitch of the leadscrews then using one of the online calculators (such as Prusa Calculator) will give you the right values.

Thanks sdavi

I am trying to understand here as I am very new to this and not just saying it. There are good points here you mentioned which I need to go back and find out about.

My main concern is if the RAMPS 1.4V I have needs to be connected to a drive such as TB6600 or could the motors be connected directly to the outputs of the RAMPS.

I found the page for the stepper motor for it's wires color coding, lost it but will search again soon since I know what I am looking for.

Thanks for you help, appreciated.

No worries, there is quite a lot of info to learn and sometimes finding it on the wiki can be a bit hard, especially if you don't know the right terminology to search for.

Based on the specs of the motor (1.5 amps), it should be able to be driven directly from the RAMPS. The DRV8825 specs say they will drive up to 1.5A without any heatsink and active cooling so you could run the motor close to its rated current as is. If you don't need the full power of the motor you can run them at a lower current to keep things a little cooler - there is a little pot on the drivers where you can adjust the current. Typically you start off low and increase the current until motors are moving correctly without stalling. Extra info about the Stepper Drivers. I have a RAMPS also with 8825s and have a cooling fan pointed at them just in case, probably not needed but doesn't hurt.

Thank you it is very useful to me, I am just starting to learn the whole concept and a bit hesitant to connect before I am sure what I am doing.

Thank You