Gen L Electronics

Overview

Generation "L" electronics are a still unassembled 4-axis motor controller platform designed to be very easily assembled and relatively cheap. Total electronics cost (including opto-endstops and other off-board parts) is under $70 when ordered in 1-board quantities. It uses two circuit boards: one for power, one for logic. The boards can be manufactured in China for $3 and $2 respectively (lots of 10). Total part count is ~80 and all but 1 are through-hole for easy hand soldering.

The motors are controller by Allegro A3992 stepper drivers via SPI. This controller is capable of 1/32-microstepping and the Teensy should be able to comfortably achieve full precision at speeds under ~4 inches/seconds. At higher speeds the resolution will gracefully degrade to 1/16th-microstepping.

The latest development code is available at: https://github.com/loganb/GenL

Software

Software for the board is as-yet, unwritten. The goal is to use the Teensy to do only the minimal work necessary to drive the controllers and read the sensors, leaving complex, floating-point math to the done on a host computer. The Teensy has a full-speed USB interface built-in for easy programming and interfacing.