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Machine Design

This week is continuation of last week (week 9). In this week we have to automate the machine. More details are documented in the group project page

Here is the link to the machine building page

Controller for the Machine

I have a designed a custom board for controlling the steper motor. This is can also be considered as gestalt board. It has atmega 328 and three A4988 stepper controllers so that we can controll three stepper motors in a single board. It has also RS485 interface so that similiar board can be connected to this board if we want to controll more stepper motors. It has three pins for the limit switches in which two ar contected to INT0 and INT1 and the other is connected PCI0 (Pin change interrupt).

Here is the screen shot of schematic and board design. The board i designed is a double side one.





Here in a single board we can connect three stepper motors. I dint add a stepper motor controller but i have added slots for connecting Pololu A4988 stepper motor controller. It can be inserted in the female header pin slots that are added in the board. Since it has RS 485 transceiver we can drive more thaan three motors also by adding one more board (same board).

We tried milling this board but we failed to get a proper double sided PCB. Also we realized that we wont get enough time for preparing our own firmware. Finally we used an Arduino Mega board and Marlin firmware for controlling the machine.

Here are the link to download the schematic and board design of the board.