Control board supporting 4 Z motors

Hi everyone,

I'm designing a 3D printer with 4 lead screws for the Z axis.

My question is: is there any control board that supports 4 stepper motors for Z axis?

I'd like to have 4 stepper motors driven with 4 different A4988/equivalent drivers. I know I could wire 4 parallel motors to one single A4988 driver but I'm afraid it would be too much current to handle for a single driver. So is there any control board which supports this scenario?

Of course if you have any advice on a better/different approach it would be appreciated too.

Thank you!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2018 07:03AM by harlandraka.

Think carefully before you use 4 leadscrews, because that will over-constrain the bed. Unless the printer is very large, 3 is better.

The Duet WiFi or Duet Ethernet + the DueX5 expansion board supports a total of 10 stepper drivers, with provision to connect a further 2 external stepper drivers. You can configure the firmware to perform true bed leveling using 3 or 4 independently-driven stepper motors. If you use 4 motors, this requires the bed to be flexible enough to twist slightly if that's what the stepper motors command. It is inevitable that a large enough bed will have this flexibility, but a small bed won't (which is why 3 leadscrews is generally better).

If you don't want to do true bed levelling in both X and Y directions, you could use 2 stepper drivers to drive 2 motors each, but you may have issues with the two motors within a pair getting out of sync.

If you don't want to do bed levelling using the leadscrews at all, then use a single motor with a belt and pulleys to drive all the leadscrews.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Hi tc42, thanks for the response.

Yes, my printer has a large printbed, I tried with 4 leadscrews because it seemed to be more stable (I hope it really is).

I couldn't find any reseller near me which has the Duet board, are you aware of any other model That supports more than 6 motors?

My printer had 2 motors on the z axis and that caused problems when they got out of sync. It also hampered bed leveling. I recommend one motor and link the screws with a closed loop belt. That is what I did and it has made my printer much more accurate.

Quote
harlandraka
Hi tc42, thanks for the response.

Yes, my printer has a large printbed, I tried with 4 leadscrews because it seemed to be more stable (I hope it really is).

I couldn't find any reseller near me which has the Duet board, are you aware of any other model That supports more than 6 motors?

Which country are you in? There is a list of Duet distributors at the bottom of [www.duet3d.com]. You can also order direct from that site.

Quote
cwaa
My printer had 2 motors on the z axis and that caused problems when they got out of sync. It also hampered bed leveling. I recommend one motor and link the screws with a closed loop belt. That is what I did and it has made my printer much more accurate.

Yes, multiple motors get out of sync, and 4 will be much worse than 2. So you need a way to sync them automatically, such as bed levelling by leadscrew adjustment. That's why I said in my earlier post:

Quote
dc42
If you don't want to do bed levelling using the leadscrews at all, then use a single motor with a belt and pulleys to drive all the leadscrews.

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].