Geeetech has their specials up, their Nema 17 is a waste of money and completely incorrect for hobby 3D printers. 10ohm, 12v; you should be looking at something rated for 2-4v, 2-ish ohm. Do not buy those Nema 17s. The DRV8825 drivers might be worth taking a look at, but they’re made incorrectly. LCD controller for $25 doesn’t seem bad. You can basically manage to get a minimal set of electronics with the Sanguinololu + 4 A4988 stepper drivers for around $50, which isn’t bad either.
I saw two things I might be interested in, but I need some more experienced advice (please?).
There is a J-head there for fairly cheap. How would this compare to my Ubis on my PrintrBot Simple? Specifically, less clogs? I use strictly PLA at the moment.
They also have GT2 belt by the meter. I’m thinking of building a printer later (maybe a Prusa i3); is this belt a good/common size? If so, I’ll pick up a few meters now.
GT2 is the best common cheap belt for 3D printers IIRC.
Think I’ll get some DRV8825 if this is the cheapest place to get em, heard they can make the printer a fair bit quieter with the extra microstepping over pololu.
@ThantiK are you referring to the DRV8825’s pots when you’re saying they’re made incorrectly or is there something else wrong with them? And agreed, a stepper with those ratings is practically useless, even if the 12V spec makes sense for the uninitiated.
@Carlton_Dodd while I haven’t had any experience with the specific jHead Geee sells, I know that knockoffs have a strong tendency of clogging and generally misbehaving.
I usually mention at this point that the HTD, GT, GT2 and GT3 profiles are compatible and achieve similar performance. The GT profile are simply rated for higher load (GT3 is the highest performing), and they are all available in a 2mm (an 3mm, 5mm and so on) pitch.
Ordered three DRV8825 for XYE … Don’t need the xtra power and the steppers are already quiet. Better precision with 32x micro stepping. Tried 0.9 deg steppers, but they made to much noise.
@Joseph_Chiu , the DRV8825 sinks heat through the underbelly of the chip. With the potentiometer on the same side as the chip you’re either doing one of two things: Putting the pins facing away from the potentiometer…but then you’ve enclosed the area where you need to be pulling heat away from and pumping heat into your electronics. Flip it around, and you can’t access your potentiometer for current adjustments.
Oh, that. The DRV8825 typically dissipates a lot less heat than the A4988 at the same output current and will get you a decent torque output without any additional cooling. If you add some cooling to them, it’s more likely that your motor mounts will melt than that the driver overheating. Been there, done that.