I’m working on a large 3d printer that needs lots of power. I’m trying to use 4 AMIS-30543 driver on a RAMPS 1.4 board over a Arduino mega with Marlin firmware. I need help getting these drivers to run with the board.
I can get the drivers to run directly from the arduino with Polulus test code.
I am using nema23s.
issue is: the ramps board is designed to take different drivers, (A4988, 2 x 8 pin types) so these wont fit. Ive tried manually wiring up each pin to the ramps board but it doesnt seem to work, no power at the stepper output. The 30543 has pins that the standard A4988 driver doesn’t. The 30543 also seems to have pins and functions that a4988 doesn’t.
Marlin code is complicated and I don’t know how to use it to test standalone functions of the ramps for 1 driver at a time.
Does anyone have driver test code for the RAMPS board?
Crux is, how can I use the 30543 with the ramps board?
Does anyone have experience with this driver?
Is there a better board I can use with them?
Is it easier to just solder my own veraboard from the Arduino?
Any help would be massively appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
I’m not that familiar with Marlin/RAMPS, but one question: do you connect the AMIS-30453 pins for SPI (DO/DI/CLK/CS) anywhere? Unlike the A4988 and DRV8825, the AMIS-30453 must be configured via SPI, such as to set the current level and microstepping. But once its configured, it operates fairly similar to the A4988 via the two 5VDC control pins (STEP/NXT and DIR). If you don’t want to modify any existing code, I suppose you “could” have a separate Arduino board configure the AMIS-30453’s via SPI on power-up and therefore have the AMIS-30453’s act as drop-in replacements for the A4988.
Also, the A4988 spec sheet says “Step Input (STEP). A low-to-high transition on the STEP input sequences the translator and advances the motor one increment.” The AMIS-30453 spec sheet says “Depending on the
NXT−polarity bit (see Table 12 SPI Control Parameter Overview), the next step is initiated either on the rising edge or the falling edge of the NXT input.” So, be sure your AMIS-30453 is configured to step on the same edge of the pulse as the A4988 to avoid off-by-one errors.
If you are interested in looking at the option of using a second Arduino that ddd mentions, our A-Star micro is a pretty compact Arduino-compatible board and it might be interesting for you.
On one hand, using a separate microcontroller seems like it is not the most elegant solution. But, as you mention, the Marlin firmware is pretty complicated and separating the driver configuration might allow you to start experimenting with some of the AMIS driver’s features without much re-coding overhead.
