Gen7T or Toshiba drivers for Gen7?

I agree that a double sided Sanguinosiba board would be better for kit sellers. I had always planned on trying to work up something along those lines after getting Gen7T up and running.

How does Clarky's statement that he is planning on doing it non-profit change the royaly equation?

Also Clarky, are you interested in collaborating on modifying your eagle board into a Sanguinoshiba board?

Thanks for the replys everyone, always interesting to hear what people think re: licensing

I've decided I'm not going to be selling anything, non-profit or otherwise. Seems like theres a bit more work to do before this is ready for anything like large scale distribution.

The 15kHz step rate issue Traumflug mentioned seems to me to be somewhat removed in the THB6064AH, as its raised to about 215kHz. Pololus being about 415kHz mean its not quite there yet but still much better. The THB6064AH also moves the pins around a bit but the major advantage I can see is that both sets of motor power pins are actually on the same side. Definitely a place for these electronics to go in the future when they're a bit more tested.

Bryanandaimee, I'm definitely interested in collaborating for a Sanguinoshiba (great name btw). I'll have a closer look at the Sanguino specs and have a go at the board. Will focus on single sided board for the time being so a RepRap can print/plot the circuit board, though I'm not sure this will be possible. This should still be worked into a 2 layer board and possibly a shield variant at some point

I agree it's not ready for prime time yet. I'm working on it at my own leisurely pace. I really like that 6064, looks like it would solve a lot of the routing problems of the 6560, and has a higher current limit and higher micro-stepping settings to boot. Haven't seen anyone stocking it yet though. Do you have a source/price for them?

Best I can find so far is US$5.58 (+postage) per chip for 100 chips, but should be able to get a "sample" of them probably be about US$85 to get 10 of them shipped anywhere in the world

Quote

How does Clarky's statement that he is planning on doing it non-profit change the royaly equation?

To be honest, I'm sick of this $10 discussion. People talk about "large scale distribution" but these same people don't have even the tiniest vision of putting a few bucks into the picture to receive or reward developer support.

These days I'm convinced, doing advanced development open source doesn't work out. The original idea of Gen7 was to be better than anything else due to leveraging the power of all the community brains, to make an excellent thing for everybody. Every small development step was documented, stuff was as open as possible. Regarding community participation, collaboration, it's a no-go. As a result, open source has to be kept always a bit behind to tame the freeriders.

Regarding being the best electronics available in terms of DIY-ability and replicatability, Gen7 is well on track. With or without TB6560. Cheers.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

So I have the three boards from Traumflug built and running. I'm still/again having trouble with resetting when motors are enabled. I might try the schottky diode and see what happens. But I should soon have my beta boards functioning.

As an asside, just after a loud bang, I realized that I had ordered the wrong capacitors. The 100uf caps I ordered were rated at 10V. I'm just glad it wasn't the drivers exploding. It's wrong in the Mouser project. I'll fix it ASAP.

well the schottky diode might be a solution to this problem otherwise you could always power the power the board straight off 12 v with a 5v volatge regulator not really what the plan was but . Also question do you have the brownout circuit set to 4.something volt I noticed when I went away from teacup that I have to use 2.7 brownout fuse or the board kept resetting (the original 1.31). try a 2.7 fuse maybe that will fix the problem
terramir

I had a similar issue with my heaters and the Arduino resetting. After rerouting the ground wires to make sure the Arduino is on a separate branch, my problems went away.

Still, I'll be making a new driver board for my heated bed soon which will be on a separate ground wire (and +12v) all together from the Gen7 board itself.

Yes, I incorporated Traumflug's ground trace fix into the latest design but it's still having problems. Curiously the alpha board with fix applied via jumper does not.

Re: 5V regulator, I'm trying to stay away from that as this is a highly ATX centric design as is the original Gen7. I think that's how a Sanguinoshiba board (someday would handle things though. And I've heard bad things sometimes happen when BOD is set lower.

Anyway, I'll be trying out diodes and stuff next week sometime.

I can't agree more.THB6064AH is really powerful.

If you have interests in THB6064AH, but not be sure for its function.I advise you to test it by yourself or communicate with others,who have tested it. Maybe you will be willing to visit [www.cnczone.com] Some guys are discussing it recently.

Hope it useful for you.

Well availability is important especially for a DIY design like this, so I think I'll stick with the current chip untill the newer chips show up in retail like Mouser, or Digikey. It doesn't really help to design a DIY board if individual hobyists can't get small quantities easily from a local supplier.
Also it looks like they will be more expensive too since they are ~$10 in quantities of 20 on ebay. That's about 3 times the price of the tb6560. At that price most would likely choose the pololus since they are the current standard. There's little reason to switch away from pololus if the price is the same.

Yes.May be it is a little expensive than TB6560. However if you buy it from Beijing Haihuaboyuan Co,Ltd directly , you can get very low price at a small quantity so far as following:

THB6064AH 1-99PCS 6.9USD/piece
THB8128 1-99PCS 6.9USD/piece
THB7128 1-99PCS 4.5USD/piece
THB6128 1-99PCS 3.2USD/piece

If you place a large order, more competitive price and free shipment will be provided. In fact, I think it's worth for this price.

You won't be disappointed with THB6064AH and other chips(THB6128,THB7128,THB8128).You can get the datasheet from [www.hhbytech.com].

Hope you can find what you want.

Regards.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2012 09:59PM by haijiang.

what you have for download is not datasheets there app notes need to see real data sheets
just to let ya know
terramir

Hi terramir,

I can't follow you. I have try to upload the datashees to this forum,but I failed. So you just visit the following link for download them.

THB8128 :[www.hhbytech.com]
THB7128:[www.hhbytech.com]
THB6128:[www.hhbytech.com]
THB6064AH:[www.hhbytech.com]

If you still can't find their datasheets,you can email to yumin2191@163.com

All the documentation will be sent to you.

the 7128 looks promising due to its smaller size and relatively low cost but I'm still worried about availability. A hobbyist generally doesn't want to have to order from some other country.

I don't think it's a big problem. International business is very common all over the world.Nowdays,the delivery is very fast and safty. Normally,it just takes 5 days or a week for shipment. If I think the product is what I want, I don't care where it is.Of course, I can understand your opinions. Hope you will enjoy your work, and thanks for your concern.

You're right it's not a big problem. I just think that a DIY design like this is better suited to a chip that is easily available from many vendors. For a Sanguinoshiba type design on the other hand it might be just the thing. In that case it is more likely that most will be built from kits rather than self sourced, so the sourcing is less of an issue. That's my next project unless someone else comes along and does it first.

So the restart issue was a partial short. I found it and the board seems to be working. So at least for now I probably won't worry about further 5V line conditioning. I'm still not sure this is a good design for single sided boards. I'm debating with myself as I build the beta boards. It is very easy to create solder bridges on the current board with all the routing between pins. All three of the boards I built have had issues, and I have a fair amount of experience soldering.

I guess I've about come to a decision that these chips are not the ones to use for a single sided design. I'm thinking of switching to the THB7128 as they seem to have a much more sensible pinout for single sided routing. I'll be exploring that option in the near future. So I guess you could take this to mean that the TB6560 version of Gen7T is on hold and likely to be a dead end, with a THB7128 version sometime in the future.

And now that I think about it I'll probably revise this board into a Sanguinololu type board now that I have spent so much time messing with it. So Gen7T is likely to be on hold for at least a few months (likely more) while I rework the TB6560 board into a double sided design. Hopefully the THB7128 will be more available by then. A big thank you to all those who have helped. Especially Traumflug of course for the initial design and for his generosity in routing test boards for me.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/2012 12:12AM by bryanandaimee.

A couple of weeks ago I made a Sanguinoshiba wiki page with schematic, board and BOM. The board is single sided as I was going to test the schematic before I made a double sided version. My apologies for not having brought this up sooner, I was hoping to be able to present a working board rather than just diagrams. I have been very busy for the last 2 weeks and will likely not get a chance to finish the board until late next week.

Differences to current Gen7T:
- Changed to Sanguino-like design, including adding on-board voltage regulation, JTAG, etc.
- Added 3rd resistor in parallel with jumper for current sense, allows max current to go to 3A if needed
- Added MOSFET to enable/disable motor power supplies
- Added decay headers
- Used 1 uC pin per driver enable (total 4 now), instead of 1 pin for all enables
- Raised theoretical limit of heated bed current about 40A (could be lower if different MOSFET or connectors used)
- Resistor footprints are for 1/2W
- IMPORTANT: Endstops are compatible with Sanguinololu, not Gen7. Wire order is now Signal-5V-GND, instead of Signal-GND-5V

One more note about the schematic version on the wiki, I haven't tied the reset of the drivers to a 5V line. I wasn't sure about how the drivers would react to a high reset (possibly before the VMa/b is on) given the startup sequence needed.

bryanandaimee, you're welcome to take this schematic and work it into a double-sided board, and I can stick the eagle files up on the wiki if you (or anyone else) would like them in their current state.

I'm undecided as to whether the double sided board is worth it with this chip. Based on my single sided board, I'm not sure there is all that much space to be saved with a double sided design, or if the slightly better power routing for the driver output lines is worth the added cost of the second side. I think the reason Sanguinololu can do it in half the space is because the Pololus have a 4 sided board, so that the outputs are all on one side and the pinout is generally nicer to work with.

As an aside, bryanandaimee's assembly pictures of Gen7T on the wiki show Arduino-like sockets (please correct me if I'm wrong) used for the drivers, which I believe are rated at 1A, so if anybody is going to use higher current than this I can confirm that SIL socket works for these drivers, and is rated up to 3A.

Nice. I just noticed that you had put up a page. I like your part placement. It does seem to overcome most of the issues I was having on my board with routing. Is the pinout sanguinololu compatible? It might be a good idea to start a thread in the Sanguino section and possibly consider changing the license to GPL to correspond with the sanquinololu licensing. Of course none of that is necessary, just thinking out loud here. I'm excited to hear about your progress.

Oh. Non-commercial license again.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

I've noticed that none of these designs seems to be using fuses on the motor power. Is that an oversight (it's recommended in the datasheet) or is it considered unnecessary?

Also, Clarky: your board doesn't obey the power supply sequencing for the motor drivers. There are several people over at CNCZone who have experienced random failures on power-on, which might be related to this.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/17/2012 06:30PM by Annirak.

Fuses are probably a good idea. I don't think it's an oversight as much as it is an intentional design choice to simplify and cut costs as much as possible. In the end these electronics designs, (mine included ) are likely to be less robust but cheaper to build. Hopefully the price difference makes up for the loss of reliability by allowing more people into the hobby. For my design specifically there was no good way to fuse each motor driver individually due to layout problems, so that along with the desire to keep costs down as low as possible contributed to the decision. As I rework to a double sided design I'm thinking of adding fuses.

As for power on sequencing, I think Clarky's board has a FET to control the 12V supply to the drivers. This would allow the firmware to control sequencing. I'm probably going to go that route as well. Any suggestions are welcome as I'm more of a hack than an electrical engineer.

Fuses are not for robustness. They are for safety. They are not usually fast enough to protect semiconductors but they stop wires and PCB traces burning in fault conditions.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

I'm also following this thread with a lot of interest. Getting Pololu's in South Africa is proving a chore, and the Toshiba chips will be a good direction to take.

Peter

Just to clear up any confusion I may have caused. My current Gen7T design with the TB6560 drivers is being reworked and will become Sanguish. The change is because of the difficulty doing a single sided design with these chips. So I'm reworking it into a double sided design. At some time in the future I'd like to come back and do a design with the THB7128 chip as this looks totally doable for a single sided board.

So final thoughts are.

1. Gen7T is on hold as I rework it into the Sanguish electronics. This will be a double sided Sanguinololu type board that fits these drivers better.

2. Hopefully sometime in the not too far future Gen7T comes back as a THB7128 design, single sided and even more DIY friendly. You may have noticed Traumflug flashing pics of some THB7128 chips arriving at his place on another thread. I'm guessing he's playing with something similar.

3. You might follow the Race to the Bottom contest if you're interested in such designs as we'll have 7 of them in the next few months.

Bryan

Sanguish is in Beta! The initial 20 boards from the board houses have passed the test. I just completed a print that lasted over an hour and had no issues. That was with 2 amp steppers with no cooling or heat sink on the TB6560 drivers. Heated bed support worked fine but I will be adding a jumper to the heated bed power trace to keep the board cooler.

For those interested, the boards will come assembled and tested for $40 plus shipping (That includes drivers!). I'm assembling the beta boards to hopefully cut down on problems for the initial beta testers. PM me if you are interested. I should be able to ship the first 5 or so within a few days of your order. The others have to wait on a few parts.

What's the current status on the Gen7T, including availability? I've been thinking about tackling my own double sided version of the Gen7T since the Wiki info was so old, then I stumbled on this.

I found the proper thread at [forums.reprap.org]

thank you for your time.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2013 11:52AM by Learner.