Splocal

Will do, and completely agree a new thread is a better idea. By the way sparkfun got back to me on how to wire the driver for 1/8th steps. All I have to do is ground one of the pins! Super easy, I think I know exactly what I need to do now to get this 4th axis working, really looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

Yes! Thank you that is exactly what I am trying to accomplish. I have my TinyG set up in a project box with constant fan air flow. However I have some small heat sinks and could add one to the driver if needed. I would assume I would see motor stutter or other issues if I was reaching those temps. The Big EasyDriver has an overheat shutdown as well so that could save the board from burning out if it got that hot.

I looked closely at all the specs on Synthetos about external drivers and this seems to fit the bill. My main concern now is that in order to set the microstepping on the EasyDriver I have to have three pinouts set as either high or low. Since TinyG has limited I/O I am not sure how to do this. It defaults to 1/16 steps which is not an option for TinyG. I need to set easy driver to 1/8 steps.

One other question you may be able to help with is that Synthetos recommends that the on board pot for the motor driver you are connecting the external driver to should be turned all the way down. Wouldn’t that essentially defeat the purpose of my goal rendering the on board motor driver unusable?
Perhaps I need two EasyDrivers setup and not use the on board driver?

Thanks again!

Hi cmcgrath5053 thank for the reply. Apologies on not providing more info on the easy driver. Looks like you found the website about it. Alden references the EasyDriver on the first page of this topic as a potential option for a 5th axis. I do not need this axis to be very tourqy just accurate and able to run a Nema17 for rotating a light cylinder to laser engrave. Is there another motor driver you might recommend if not the EasyDriver? I have considered running both my Yaxis motors on one driver but I have Nema23’s on Y axis and plan to do some aluminum cutting soon. I don’t want to burn out an irreplaceable driver on the TinyG board itself. I felt an external driver was a safer option and the driver could be replaced if it burned out.

Lquiroz,
I tried searching for the driver you mentioned but had no luck. I need to hook up an external driver for my duel Y axis to free up a spot for an A axis. I would really appreciate you sharing which driver you are using, thanks!!!