Review on 🏃 Enhanced Performance: STEPPERONLINE 1042A Micro Step Resolutions (20-50VDC) by Erik Haynes

I am very happy with these drivers. I bought three of these to drive two NEMA 23 stepper motors in the Y axis and one NEMA 23 stepper motor in the X axis. I've stopped using the built in drivers on my Smoothieboard clone which I suspected weren't adequately driving motors. After switching, this motor driver is much quieter and I'm getting consistent results now. However, I learned a few lessons along the way. First off, there are some pretty weird suggestions for connecting them to the smoothie board. The simplest and most obvious solution is to take a 4-wire straight pin connector with TTL signals (3.3V or 5V depending on your board's configuration) and connect each axis to your drivers. In my case I started with the X axis which has P0.4, P2.0, P0.5 and GND (using the smoothie board pin numbers) and GND with all three ENA, DIR and PUL connected; P0.5 connected to DIR+; P2.0 connected to PUL+ and P0.4 to ENA+. The 4 wire stepper motor leads go to A+, A-, B+ and B- and I am powered directly from my 24VDC power supply to the power inputs. The switch settings are just a little confusing. You have a smoothie board that is set to either 16 microsteps or 32 microsteps. The switch setting table entry for 32 microsteps is 6400 steps per revolution. Forget the numbers 400, 800, 1600 and just look at the microsteps to find the switch settings. The peak current for my motors is 2.8A, so that's what I chose for the current. In the Smoothieware configuration you need to make ONE change. The direction pin setting must be inverted. Just add ! then (for the x-axis, also called alpha): alpha_dir_pin 0.5! This must be done for each axial motor driven by this driver. The default Smoothieware configuration has 1 microsecond for microseconds_per_step_pulse, which seems too short for this driver. This is actually spot on as seen on my oscilloscope. This is about 3-4 microseconds and this driver is on a rising edge so the Smoothieware settings should not be changed. If you have two Y axis motors you just need to wire the inputs in series. The motors must be connected in the same way as when connected directly to the smoothie board, which often results in them turning in opposite directions. In my case P2.1 connects to PUL+ on each of the two drivers, P0.11 to DIR+ (and needs to be inverted in the configuration file), P0.10 to ENA+ and GND to PUL-, DIR- and ENA - on each of the both drivers. Do not use the GND of the signal connector for the power connection. Both +24V and ground must come directly from your power supply. Basically, I should have done this when building my CNC in the first place. These drivers are greatly appreciated. Apparently there are a few cheap fakes out there as well, they might be a bit cheaper but I would buy them again.