Can a driver drive several stepper motors simultaneously?
The device is not a simple step motor + step motor controller + will be assembled. It's a system, and it's a collaboration between an electrical engineer and a software engineer. As you say, the top machine has a lot of serial ports that control a step motor controller that can do these functions. But there is no reliability, consistency, slow response. It requires a lot of widgets, software programs, etc. Such systems are typically developed by electronic engineers with a powerful controller. Using only one serial communication, you can download the computer graphics into a single chip. The single chip drives many of the stepping motors. But the driver of a single chip is not that big, and you can add a drive or a light-coupled drive to drive more. This is going to be calculated. Especially current!
At present, this type of engraving machine is mainly three shafts in the control position of the motor, and the main spindle is the main shaft of the high-speed current. Each respective has a stepper motor drives, drives are usually separate, small step motor drive also has a few do) on a large circuit board, the control part is usually a multiplexed output control card, respectively control the speed of the stepper motor direction and feed, is known as multi-axis control card, the working principle of the control card I am sorry that I can't use the words clearly. The gantry structure in small machine is usually composed of a devoted into the motor, if the size and weight of the gantry is large, with two stepper motor, lest produce distortion of cantilever deformation leading to position; Two stepper motors have two kinds of control mode, one is parallel to the same signal two drives to control two corresponding stepper motors, another is a two step motor drive belt. On a drive to drive the two stepping motors, the drive of the requirement is high, also require the consistency of the stepper motor is good, because the current drive, demand drive the output current is big enough, and there are differences between the stepper motor coil parameters are abnormal fever may cause burn out.
No, you can't have a drive with a few motors, and it must be said on the manual of the motor
