I have a noob question on power ratings:
I´m using the Make Controller and aim to control a powered linear slider. The board´s digital outputs are rated at 1 Amp and the slider type I am going for w steppers usually are 3-5 Amps. Is there an easy way to hook these up to each other? If so how is it done?
Any help appreciated.
it would be helpful to post a link to the controller and slider/stepper devices you are using, otherwise people have to already be familliar with what you are talking about, go look stuff up for you so they can help, or talk out of their backside. 
I have never heard of a Make Controller. Did you mean micro controller? if so, what kind?
Or it could be also known as a “whatchamacallit” or “thingamabob” or “dohicky”.
i´m sorry,
lynxmotion spam control won´t let new forum users add web links with their first postings.
the Make controller is from makingthings
linear slider stepper from Baldormotion… product DSMS-Series DC
No problem, I understand. We like to get crazy on the forums to keep it spiced up. Well I cant speak for everyone but at least I do. Also, I really have not heard of the Make controller and Eddie posted a link to it which I was not able to open up due to our company’s web control settings. For some strange reason, I can only access .net websites but not .com websites. Even the .net websites that I am able to open up, it lacks images. At 12:00 Central Time they open it all up for one hour and I can go any where.
We are treated like children here. 
crazy is good 
Well it might be I should read up some more on electronics anyway before I post stuff here. I m a coder myself and know way too little about electronics but I´ve recently entered into the world of controlling motors and stuff with
simple web actionscripts and it s way cool.
My question is really more general I think: how do I pair controllers with one power rating with motors with a much higher Amp rating? I read something about relays and other stuff but are this type of connections complex or easy enough for noobs?
There are motor controllers designed to power motors at the proper voltage. The microcontroller sends a signal via your program software to the motor controller, and the motor controller drives the motor. Usually there are seperate power sources. The microcontroller can run on a 9v batttery and the motor controller can run on a 12v supply. In a nut shell thats the concept.
Is thishttp://www.baldormotion.com/products/images/DSMS_Group.jpg
what we are talking about? This is an integrated stepper motor + drive. You supply raw power and control it using an SPI bus and/or discrete signals like step and direction. Your Make controller should have no issues talking with this as it isn’t actually controlling the power to the motor windings, just the signals to the electronics integrated into the motor.
thanks a lot for answering my questions,
"That current listing of 2 or 4A says it s too current-hungry for the drivers on the Application Board. You’ll need relays/switches in order to drive this.
You can always use a separate power supply to drive the motors, but there’s still the current flowing through the output drivers that has an upper limit…so you could have the biggest power supply you like but you still have to run it through the 30V/1A limit drivers in order to control the motor."
My answer was predicated on your description of the motor you are using. This is why I started off with asking if I had linked the correct product, which matches the description you gave of Baldormotion product DSMS-Series DC. The link I supplied is for a stepper motor with integrated drive electronics, which means the actual electronics used to drive the stepper windings are built into/onto the stepper motor itself. For this type of motor+electronics you supply the raw power rail (+12VDC, +24VDC, whatever) and signals such as step and direction. Those signals are opto-isolated so your Make board simply need to be able to turn on/off an LED at whatever step rate you plan on using, and maybe use the SPI bus to do some configuration if necessary.
NOW, if on the other hand you are just using a raw stepper motor without the integrated drive electronics then you will need some drive electronics to bridge the gap between the Make controller and the stepper motor.
So the question you need answer, to determine which answer supplied to you is correct, is whether the stepper motor has integrated drive electronics or not.
OK, I get it now.
If I was to use a raw stepper - what electronics are you then reffering to? Is that a complicated setup? Thanks.
It is not uncomplicated, unless you want to just buy a controller/driver module.
A quick run down… stepper motors come wired in two flavors, unipolar and bipolar. Unipolar are simpler to drive but bipolar can generate considerably more torque from the same supply voltage/current. Assuming you are talking about a bipolar wound stepper motor then you would at a minimum use two H-bridge drivers, one for each winding. You need to deal with controlling the current (using PWM) through both windings and sequencing the windings in the correct order to make the motor step. There are chips and boards out there to do the electronics part (the two H-bridges) based on the L298, LM18200, or more advanced products will build the circuits from MOSFETs. The motor size and phase current requirements will determine what you need for drivers.
Believe it or not that is the easy part.
You need to consider that your basic stepper motor has 200 “steps” per rotation. Moving from one position to another is called stepping. If you move the entire 1.8 degrees (360 / 200) it is called a full step. Say the word “KLUNK” out loud and you will know what a full step sounds like when bolted to a slide rail. Now go KLUNK KLUNK KLUNK KLUNK as fast as you can and imagine 20 times that noise to get an idea of what moving quickly (full stepping) from one position to another will sound like. Add in the fact that stepper drives tend to resonate at rates between 50 and 150 steps per second and the noise alone will drive most people out of the room. This is why there are micro-stepping drives. They control the ratio of current between the two stepper phases to allow moving a portion of a step. At the simplest level the two phases are related by sin and cos as you move from one full step to the next. Unfortunately it is rarely that easy and you need to distort the relationship to compensate for the torque loss introduced by having a stepper motor in between full states. Let me just say that there are people that make a living from designing circuits and systems to do this well.
It “can” be a fun project. The fact you only need to make it work for a particular motor or two makes it simpler. If you have the cash though and/or control of the stepper motor isn’t the point of your project you might just want to purchase a micro-stepping driver rated to run your size/current stepper motor.
awesome feedback, big thanks .
You´ve saved me a lot of headaches by describing this challenge. I´ll go the easy route I think. To sum it up: going with an integrated solution as presented at the Baldor web page won´t give any power problems since the Make Controller is only connected to the driver part - and the current involved won´t be an issue?
