Cheap China Nema 23 stepper drivers

I built a 2x4 foot CNC that has all ball screws and very nice rails and these Nema 23 motor kit Want to get something that would do about 100 ipm or more on the cut and rapids but I can only get 50 ipm and was thinking it is the motors because the balls screws turn very eazy znd the rails are like sliding on ice. Nothing is binding but just can only get 50 ipm. The first CNC I built, I used the HobbyCNC Pro Driver Board Combo with 425 oz steppers and they seemed lot more powerful but I built the power supply. My question is what do I need to do. Built a bigger power supply, get better driver boards, or just swap out the whole kit with nema34. any help on the situation would be a greatly appreciate it because I don't have the money to start experimenting with a bunch of different drive systems.
Thanks,
Trell

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Are those 4 wire motors? If so, get some drives that can handle 80 volts, and use a 72V power supply.

Are you using 5mm pitch ballscrews? If so, those are a poor combination with those motors and drives. You'd have been better off with 10mm pitch screws.

You'd also get a lot better performance with smaller motors and better drives. A Gecko G540 with 300oz motors might give you 5x better performance. It's important that the motors you choose have very low inductance, if you want high rpm's. Somewhere around 2mH.

Gerry,
I am impressed with your knowledge of drives and steppers Let me get a little more info. The biggest thing in this design was to keep the price down but still have some what good performance. Most of the time I use the hobby CNC stuff but have had issues with noise with the inputs on the boards and trying to get something a little better but the Hobby CNC kit would do 90 IPM on a threded rod LOL and yes they are 4 wire motors I will get the info for the Ball Screws and post it here Thanks

It looks like those drivers will handle up to 50v, so swapping the 36v supply for a 48v one should give you better performance. But Ger's probably right - it sounds like motor inductance might be the major limiting factor.

Well after some digging I found out that the ball screws I am using are 5mm and dont have the funds to swap them out (will get 10mm next time) but for this design I will have to swap out the motors and/or the drive system. I found this motor kit on ebay and would this work for this design being direct drive 3Axis-Nema34-Stepper-Motor or would it be best to redesign to use a belt drive on on the axis or would just getting the Gecko G540 fix the issue. BTW the system works great just need a little more speed and power if I can get it.
Thanks for all the help

I'm not sure about that driver, but those motors have even more inductance (15mH) than the ones you've got, which themselves are way too high. I doubt if they'd help one bit, since your problem is lack of speed, not torque. Swapping out the power supply is the cheapest fix. Swapping out the motors for lower inductance ones would be second-cheapest. If you still don't have good performance, then yes, swapping the drivers for a G540 would be the next thing to try.

Cool, thanks for the help, I will try the power supply and let you know what happens

OK got the new power supply but just a 48vdc because of the funds and it didn't help much. got 10 more IPM not to good for an extra $100 dollars. Have to try something else. I get only 60 IPM and if it gets to much of a load on the system it will skip like a school girl. What should I try next...

Swapping out the motors for others with lower inductance would probably be the next step.

All you need are low cost nema 23 motors with inductance of around 2 mH. You will easily achieve 100 to 200 ipm rapids.

Any ideal where to find a motor with low mH because I looked through ebay but cant find anything. I will still keep looking., but if someone knows a good place to pick them up, please let me know.

What about this one 3 Pcs NEMA 23 Stepper Motor 381 oz in Designed with Low Inductance | eBay

Those would be a big improvement. Or these:
NEMA23 570oz/in 5A 3/8? Dual Shaft Stepper Motor (KL23H2100-50-4B) | Automation Technology Inc

OK I found the issue with my CNC not going fast or having any power... on the Chinese drivers there are switches so you can set up the power and amps for what motors you are using. On the switch frame, Very Very small on the right side and almost completely covered up by the case is where it says that down is on and up is off. Leave it to the Chinese to have down as on. Had it set up as .1 amp instead of 4 amp. After I change that, the CNC was flying across the table then I changed the motor to the low inductive motor and BAM works great. Thanks for all your help, guys

If I was going to build a CNC plasma cutter with the old motors with dual rack and pinion on the X axis, how much of a reduction drive should I use? Or should I just resell them on ebay.

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Originally Posted by Trell

OK I found the issue with my CNC not going fast or having any power... on the Chinese drivers there are switches so you can set up the power and amps for what motors you are using. On the switch frame, Very Very small on the right side and almost completely covered up by the case is where it says that down is on and up is off. Leave it to the Chinese to have down as on. Had it set up as .1 amp instead of 4 amp. After I change that, the CNC was flying across the table then I changed the motor to the low inductive motor and BAM works great. Thanks for all your help, guys

If I was going to build a CNC plasma cutter with the old motors with dual rack and pinion on the X axis, how much of a reduction drive should I use? Or should I just resell them on ebay.

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I use a 4:1 reduction via an 18:72 HTD belt set up. Works great.

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you can have a look at this china stepper motor supplier, very cheap. I aways buy nema size 17 stepper motor on this site for 3d printer. Some my friends are also the regular customer of this site.