I need help choosing a control board for the IDEX I’m designing. Needs to be able to run 7 motors (2 X, 1 Y, 2 Z but I can live if I have to forgo one Z motor, and 2 Extruders). I’m going to try to use BCN3D’s marlin based firmware. I’m not sure how the Sigma does it’s bed leveling, I was going to use a BLTouch but I’m not sure if using one for each hotend would be overkill.
Forgive my ignorance, but what is an Idex?
OK, thanks 
The Azteeg X3 pro has 8 motor drivers on it. It has the most on-board drivers of any board I know of.
There are WAY more options for Marlin boards if you only use one Z motor and get the total down to six.
I would consider the Duet ecosystem. I don’t know if it supports IDEX but it’s worth looking into.
Yeah somebody said Duet supports IDEX on one of my other posts. I’ll look into it but for now I want to go with Marlin because I don’t really want all my printers running a different firmware.
@Ryan_Carlyle What are my options with one Z motor? I may still do 2 lead screws with 1 motor.
You can easily run 2 motors off one driver.
Run 2 z motors in parallel. Just make sure you’re getting enough cooling on the driver.
Options for two screws on one Z channel:
- Wire two identical motors in parallel. Each gets about half current from the driver.
- Wire two motors in series. Effectively cuts the motor drive voltage in half, i.e. If you have a 24v PSU each motor “sees” 12v. (Which is fine on Z.)
- Solder up a double driver stack to put two drivers on one STEP/DIR channel.
- Use one Z motor and synchronize the screws with a belt.
I think the belt’s gonna be the best option and that’ll work even better than 2 Z motors so I won’t have to worry about the current being perfectly equal when I tune the drivers. So the Azteeg X3 is going the be the best option? It looks like its got enough for endstops for the 2 X, 1 Y, 1 Z, and 2 BLTouch.
Make sure you’re looking at the X3 pro. The X3 doesnt have as many motor outputs. And yes, can handle those endstops (and more).
So after some research it appears that Marlin does support dual X carriages but not at different Z offsets which is half the reason to go with IDEX over dual head CoreXY so Duet seems to be the way to go
I also just got the duet WiFi and extension board for my next idex build. Can you share what your idex will look like?
@Step_Cia Still mocking it up in Fusion360. I hoped to have it done this weekend but family events interfered. Hopefully I’ll have something to show the community at the end of the week.
No problem. Have you decided wether to use independent z as well. I’m still undecided at the moment. The duet expansion board I get jas the extra capacity I suppose might as well utilize that extra spot for independent z
Well my current issue on my Prusa is that when I power it down, one side slips and RUINS my calibration so after I power it back on I have to re-run Z calibration. Luckily the nozzle height stays the same so it’s not a huge issue but I don’t want my IDEX to have this issue so my current plan is to do 2 lead screws driven by 1 motor via belt. The motor will be in the middle and the belt path will kind of look like a really short and wide T with 2 idlers to route the belt from the motor.