There are a few things that should be noted here, this is not just a simple stepper controller it's a smart controller which can be easily updated and changed.

Some advantages of the driver :

• more drive modes selectable by jumpers or program (normal, half step,  high torque)
• power saving mode
• ability to add temperature sensors, limit sensors to protect the machine

The driver is built around a pic16f84 microcontroller, basically the circuit is a tension stabilizer, an oscillator for the pic microcontroller, some components to set pin B0 as interrupt and all the ports pins are connected to pins so they can be easily connected.

WARNING: to create this you will need to program the pic microcontroller, and for that you need a programmer, you can see how to build one on this blog, here : pic 16f84 jdm programmer

Here is a picture with the final product :

stepper driver front view

stepper driver back view

2 controllers in an 2 axis driver

For the pcb design i used the eagle software (great software) to create first a schematic then the board and then the print files,

here is the schematic :

Stepper controller schematic

The huge advantage for this is that you have all the port pins connected to pins, and all of them except the pin b0 (which is made to be kept low or high) can be used for anything.

In this case we have pins bo - tact, pin b1 - direction, pins b2- b5 as phases selection.

And now here are the designs for this schematic :

bottom view

top view

And here is the file ready to be printed, this file is at the actual dimensions :

stepper controller print

In the above image the top layer is already mirrored so all you have to do is print it and follow the instructions from this post : How to create PCB’s using toner transfer method

All you have to do now is to program the pic, here is the compiled version : Compiled program

The program is compiled using ccs compiler, if you are interested here is the  source code : source code

And this is is.... have fun.

Related posts:

1. Stepper motor inteligent driver and controller
2. programming the pic16f84
3. Testing my stepper motor driver and software

The frame of the machine is build from wood and use furniture rails as guides for the moving parts. The stepper motors are from old printers on floppy disk units and they are very different one from each other. The driver motor drivers are build by me from scratch using L298n (i'll ost about the driver later) and a pic micro controller to command the driver (i'll also post about that later).

I'll just post a video with the x axis working and detail each part in later posts.

Related posts:

1. Stepper motor inteligent driver and controller
2. Stepper motor controller