Just as a 'follow-up' posting...
There's already a company that markets stepper motors with 'built-in' controllers...
Specifically, LinEngineering link.
While some of their offerings aren't too well suited to the Reprap community, they have others which are a very good fit!
The D and DE models should be quite simple to integrate while the C and CE models would be more work.
IMNSHO, they should have included some additional 'protection' into the devices such that they didn't risk 'letting out their magic smoke' if disconnected while powered up. (Since the motor is permanently connected to the associated driver electronics, I would have expected this protection to be intrinsic? However, I've obviously missed something since they included the usual warning against disconnecting while powered on)
Also, they only support 1:1, 1:2, 1:4 and 1:8 micro-stepping on the Nema17 series. (Significantly more micro stepping ratios exist on their Nema23 and Nema34 versions!)
I _do_ like the fact that they've elected to isolate the input signals with opto-couplers
There's already a company that markets stepper motors with 'built-in' controllers...
Specifically, LinEngineering link.
While some of their offerings aren't too well suited to the Reprap community, they have others which are a very good fit!
The D and DE models should be quite simple to integrate while the C and CE models would be more work.
IMNSHO, they should have included some additional 'protection' into the devices such that they didn't risk 'letting out their magic smoke' if disconnected while powered up. (Since the motor is permanently connected to the associated driver electronics, I would have expected this protection to be intrinsic? However, I've obviously missed something since they included the usual warning against disconnecting while powered on)
Also, they only support 1:1, 1:2, 1:4 and 1:8 micro-stepping on the Nema17 series. (Significantly more micro stepping ratios exist on their Nema23 and Nema34 versions!)
I _do_ like the fact that they've elected to isolate the input signals with opto-couplers