I am going to build my own rotary attachment. I have a blue and gray 60w (probably an omtech) running a ruida 6442g controller.
My main question is connecting it. Can I just solder on a 4 pin aviation plug to a nema 17 motor and unplug the Y axis of the machine and plug the rotary in there? and it “should” work? Or is there more to it than that? The reason I ask is i’ve read about people connecting it to a separate stepper driver and a 3p2t toggle switch and such. Can someone please give me a little insight here. Thank You.
This is a good question. I am also trying to find the answer to this. I think it can be done and controlled thru Lightburn. My thoughts are that it can as long as you have the same size nema motor and set the rotary in lightburn to the steps that your driver iis set to it will work. Can anybody that has done this give some insight ?
That’s the standard way of getting it done, with the caveat that the rotary’s stepper motor must be capable of handling the same winding current as the Y axis motor.
My OMTech 60 W has NEMA 23 size motors with the winding current set to 3.5 A peak, which is likely a bit higher than strictly necessary. A rotary with a NEMA 17 motor (which is all you really need to turn a cup) would get smokin’ hot in short order.
The motivation for using a separate driver brick is to avoid that problem.
IMO, you can wire the rotary’s driver brick in parallel with the existing driver’s Step and Direction signals, then unplug whichever motor you’re not using. No fancy switch needed: the driver doesn’t care whether you have a motor plugged in or not. If you insist on a switch, a DPDT controlling the (unused on my driver) Enable input on each driver would do the trick.
Perhaps you’d need a different LB configuration to get the rotary distances to work out properly, but that’s in the nature of fine tuning.
Thanks
My plan is to use the same size nema motor as already in the laser. I believe it is a nema 23 The driver is set to peak 3.0 amps and rms of 2.12.
Check your motors current requirements… I commonly find the Chinese run too much current through these… I had to lower it on both of my motor drivers.
Good luck
Good info! Makes sense on using the same motor. Ive got a nema 17 on the way, but looking at this this nema 23, its got a rated current of 4, that should probably be good right?
RTELLIGENT Nema 23 Stepper Motor 2.2Nm 4.0A 4-Lead 57x80mm 8mm Shaft 1.8Deg Digital Step Stepping Motor for 3D Printer/Laser/CNC Machine https://a.co/d/9iH93YW
Im not really sure whats in there right now, cant see any stickers on the motor.
I’d suggest checking the stepper driver for the current configuration. Make sure your NEMA17 can support that level or else you’ll have a bad time.
Thanks for the good advice. I actually checked my driver configurations 1st. So now I am looking for a stepper with the same amp rating.
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