can i use grblshield as a general purpose stepper controller?

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  • November 16, 2014 at 1:52 pm #6991
    paul.rodgers.us@gmail.com
    Member

    I have a grblshield v3 in my shapeoko, and an older spare v2 lying around.

    want to drop that on an Uno, and use it to control 1 or 2 steppers.
    But not grbl at all. This is for a sewing machine hack!

    But I can’t find any docs on programming the Uno to drive the grblshield!
    is it simply a matter of setting enable, setting the direction and pulsing the step pin?

    anyone ever done this?

    December 6, 2014 at 7:46 pm #7128
    elocremarc
    Member

    I have the same question can anyone help. I would like to use it to make a 3-axis time-lapse controller. Therefore I want to write a interface for motor control. and don’t want to send commands via G-Code and Serial.

    December 6, 2014 at 8:18 pm #7130
    elocremarc
    Member

    Hey I tried it and it worked! digitalWrite(8, LOW); That enables the drivers and then you just need to send step and dir commands

    February 9, 2015 at 1:47 pm #7351
    ArneVDL
    Member

    Hey,

    I ordered my grblshield today for kind of the same purpose as you guys, I don’t need grbl and I just want to use it as a casual motor controller. For my project I will need the grblshield to drive 1 stepper in the X-direction and 2 steppers simultaneously in the Y-direction. So now I have 2 questions that I hope you guys will be able to answer out of your experiences with the grblshield:

    1) Is it most convenient to use the same driver for both my steppers in Y-direction (they only need 1,13A/winding) or should I better use the Y- and the Z-direction for this?

    2) In both of above cases: how do I address to the motors from my Arduino program? I.e. should I write to more than only pin 8, as you suggested above?

    I’m sorry if some (or parts) of my questions are ‘stupid’, but it’s my very first project with Arduino or grblshield so I don’t have any experience.

    Thanks in advance,
    Arne

    PS: if you’re talking about sending step and dir commands, you doing this with (something like) the AccelStepper library, right?

    July 14, 2017 at 1:43 am #10462
    mrwildbob
    Member

    @elocremarc

    Do you have any sample code I can load to test. I am trying to use my shield just to control my steppers until I get my machine finished. This way I can tweak the machine before calibration.

    Thanks!

    boB

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