Im also interested in this project.
I also believe having the stepper motor drivers on the board is not a good idea, I'm building a combined CNC/3d printer, and need a lot more current support, potentially up to 3 amps per winding. If the board can output buffered enable, step, direction, and speed lines for each axis, then the user is at liberty to chose whatever driver technology they want.
Speed lines are generally not used at the moment on most systems, but would allow dynamic alteration of the micro stepping resolution selectors. Potential allowing fast gross movements beyond what can be supported with standard micro controllers with a fixed micro-stepping resolution. I have been experimenting with this by hacking the accelstepper lib on a setup that has a bigeasydriver connected with its ms0-ms3 lines connected to digital outputs. Im using a 10 wire connector and plug to connect the bigeasydriver to a arduinoMEGA proto shield.
In fact without the drivers i suspect its possible to get everything onto a mega shield sized board with edge mounted connectors.
Re use of automotive parts, yes, more of that please, i live in a part of the world (philippines) where even normally common parts are extremely hard to find, and ordering from abroad can take anywhere between 4-8 weeks. Automotive parts are relatively easy to find, especially US parts.
Another difficulty (not directly relevant to electronics) , is it hard to get metric parts, like the US we use imperial/American standards, but unlike the US, we don't have the specialist or easy online sources that can provide metric parts when we need them.
I also believe having the stepper motor drivers on the board is not a good idea, I'm building a combined CNC/3d printer, and need a lot more current support, potentially up to 3 amps per winding. If the board can output buffered enable, step, direction, and speed lines for each axis, then the user is at liberty to chose whatever driver technology they want.
Speed lines are generally not used at the moment on most systems, but would allow dynamic alteration of the micro stepping resolution selectors. Potential allowing fast gross movements beyond what can be supported with standard micro controllers with a fixed micro-stepping resolution. I have been experimenting with this by hacking the accelstepper lib on a setup that has a bigeasydriver connected with its ms0-ms3 lines connected to digital outputs. Im using a 10 wire connector and plug to connect the bigeasydriver to a arduinoMEGA proto shield.
In fact without the drivers i suspect its possible to get everything onto a mega shield sized board with edge mounted connectors.
Re use of automotive parts, yes, more of that please, i live in a part of the world (philippines) where even normally common parts are extremely hard to find, and ordering from abroad can take anywhere between 4-8 weeks. Automotive parts are relatively easy to find, especially US parts.
Another difficulty (not directly relevant to electronics) , is it hard to get metric parts, like the US we use imperial/American standards, but unlike the US, we don't have the specialist or easy online sources that can provide metric parts when we need them.