New Build (FINALLY!!!)

[loopee]

You should look at the TMC2209/TMC2130 stepper drivers, pin compatible to the A4988 drivers but do up to 1/256 microstepping and are silent due to the StealthChop feature (removes the common stepper whine noise)

[clickamouse]

https://photonlexicon.com/forums/sho...911#post364911

Cheapest means I've found.

Cheers...Mike

[absolom7691]

You should look at the TMC2209/TMC2130 stepper drivers, pin compatible to the A4988 drivers but do up to 1/256 microstepping and are silent due to the StealthChop feature (removes the common stepper whine noise)

I'll definitely check these out. These little steppers aren't too loud once the cover to my lumia projector is on. 1/256th might be a bit extreme for me but I'll still probably pick some up anyway. Stepper drivers are pretty damn inexpensive.

I finally gutted the last of the brushed DC motors and gearboxes. I printed up a new mount for the torture/dimple tube steppers. These are only a 19:1 gear reduction as they were more inexpensive than the 64:1 modules and they had the convenience of being available on Amazon. No mucking around with int'l shipping. I also found that they both perform about the same using the drivers I have. Plus, I am not going to be running these effects glacially slow. Once mounted, I did a small test to ensure everything is working correctly. The next phase is to get rid of the Ledex rotary solenoids for effect selection. They are fast but damn, they are loud! Since I have been having great luck with Arduino/stepper motors, the effect selector I'm going with is a stepper with a mirror mount that I am fabricating and a optocoupler for 0 position reference. This'll all be driven via DMX so I can manually select effects or plug the selections into a Beyond timeline. No movement on that yet but getting closer. Anyway, here are the pics, thus far.

[buffo]

Nice work, Brian!

The steppers that we were playing with at SELEM were indeed the same ones you originally posted. They have a 60-1 planetary gearbox on the output shaft. I've seen that same design with a 100-1 gearbox, but I think that would be too slow.

I had issues with the A4988 stepper driver you posted, so I switched to the TB6600 units ($25 for 4 of them from Amazon). They work great. Pretty sure Mike Gould used these for some of his projects as well.

I was able to slow those steppers down to a virtual crawl with only 1/8th stepping, but I could also speed them up so fast that the Lumia looked like flames on the wall. Very cool stuff.

I used this Pulse-Width Modulation generator to control the stepper driver. $12 each on Amazon if you buy 2.

Adam

[clickamouse]

Good job! Steppers rool.

[PhantomRage]

HOLY this thread is amazing! I did not even think to use half this stuff for laser effects. Now off to thrift stores with the laser pointer and another project to build.