42 57 Stepper Motor Driver Controller Integrated Board Forward/Reverse Pulse Speed Angle Control Module PLC Serial Communication

Admittedly I am a bit under-experienced when it comes to stepper motor applications and also their associated controllers so keep that in mind with this review please. So anyways this stepper drive controller is awesome with its many uses. You can set forward speed, back speed, steps (Essentially Distance Traveled.) Multiple pattern types (Pulses, Forward and Back, etc.) how many times it repeats a pattern up to infinitely, control the motor with the potentiometer, control it with buttons only when held or toggle on and off and the list goes on. These are all features built right into the board and the applications for it can go on and on. It really is awesome, however it takes a bit of a steep learning curve at first to decipher everything with the menus and such. I took about an hour to get the hang of everything, hopefully though I can save you that time by a large part. My first major issue was trying to figure out why there were two completely different tables on the instructions that seemed to be accessed the same way in the menu and had overlapping values meaning they were impossible to set right... Well that was a misunderstanding on my part. When you press the potentiometer in the menu it originally brings you into is the ‘Parameter’ menu so you need to look at the parameter table just to start off. The default value you’ll see come up is F-01 which is the associated value on the parameter table. By rotating the potentiometer you can change the value from F-01 through F-13. And those will all correspond to what they do on the “Parameter Table” specifically. For example Rotating the potentiometer to F-03 brings up your forward speed value under it. To select and change it you click the potentiometer in and it will cycle you through the changeable values with each click. Rotating the potentiometer up and down will increase or decrease the highlighted value. Click it enough and you’ll Get back to the F-XX value that can be changed again to access the other Parameter options. Or at any point you can press and hold the potentiometer for 3 seconds and be taken back to the starting menu. F-05 allows you to Change Reverse Speed and so forth… Now the secondary table which is the “Work Mode” table. This is actually a submenu sort of selection as part of the “Parameter Menu.” When you first press the potentiometer in and you are brought into the parameter selection menu and it will be on the default value of F-01. And will have a value below it of likely P-01. But can be any P-XX value in general. That P-XX value is the value to change the “Work Mode” so in other words that P-XX value is what corresponds to now specifically the “Work Mode Table.” So to change it, first make sure you are on F-01 and then press the potentiometer in and change to P-XX value to 01-09 to correspond with the work mode you want. Then press the potentiometer in until it takes you back to the main display. So for example F-01 (1st on the function table) with a value of P-02 puts the board into a work mode where the motor spins when you hold the CW button. And goes the opposite way if you hold the CCW button. If you go to F-01 / P-03 it will now do the same thing but stay on after the button is pressed until you press the button again. The stop button. Or a button to go the opposite direction. The other Work Modes are much more advanced and too much to try and go into here. Just reference the tables and maybe play with them a bit to get an idea. In the “Work Mode Table” when it says something like it will continue for “F-06” loops; what it is saying is it will loop the amount of times you set the value to in the F-06 “Parameter Menu.” Same for F-02 (Pulse Number/Distance) and so forth. The work modes have no value to be set themselves, everything they use is from the Parameter (F-02 - F-13) menus. Remember that and it will save you a ton of time and confusion. I have included some pictures of the instructions with this review for reference in case you lose yours or just want something to get an idea of this all before buying so I hope that will be of help :) Another issue I had was trying to figure out why some of the work modes weren't doing forward and back and such like they were supposed to. Another tip is you might need to set your forward and back position delay (F-07 and F-08) to something other than 00. I was having issues with it at that value not progressing to the next Phase of the Work Mode. For example it goes forward then just stops instead of going forward, back, forward, back and so forth. I think that it’s because 00 is handled as infinite on this board so it was never finishing the phase? No idea. But again any value other than 00 works. Other than that a couple of other tips is if you are running this a lot you might want to cool it a bit with a fan as the controller can get hot under continuous duty. Alternatively adjusting the current level down using the potentiometer is good to help keep it cool. The value should be whatever the lowest you can go with your motor where it still works for what you need. A sign of it not having enough power would it be not turning at all, or skipping steps which is usually heard with a clicking noise. Everything aside I am excited to put this controller to use for some projects of mine. I am very happy with it. Hopefully the info here will be useful, thanks for reading!

Justo lo que esperaba

Works ok but the programming is not obvious. No instructions which is why I put 3 stars. I will take time to figure this out and this shouldn’t be so. The video show a hand setting parameters but even that is weird.

Wonderful little controller. Works perfectly to drive NEMA 17 stepper motor. Used to build custom motor system for 16mm film camera. Ramp up/down. Easy RPM control. Wide voltage range. Very easy to wire setup and control. Had this going in minutes. Used for about 6 hours so far and still going strong. Don’t cover the heat sink. It gets hot (to be expected this is normal). Highly recommended!

The display works, the settings seem to work, but it has no output to drive the stepping motor it is supposed to