The final boards will also have an extra pin that will allow the main board to control the current output of the drivers.  Should you have a board that supports this, you can simply ignore the analog potentiometer and set the current through software.

That is going to be huge!  What a great improvement.  Personally, I'll be waiting a while until there is a finale version of these that comes assembled and doesn't require soldering and there is an electronics board available that can make use of the above, but its cool to see what is on the horizon.  Maybe another year or couple years?

The Azteeg part doesn't matter (we are discussing drivers here), since it isn't what actually drives the steppers. Actually the Azteeg could have been the limiting factor, but we'll get to that in a moment.

You may have experienced some things, but you may not have the knowledge/education to be able to interpret those experiences correctly. For example, Marlin can issue step commands at 10khz. This works out to about 65mm/sec at 32x micro stepping and typical pulley sizes. Beyond this, steps will be missed. Therefore, even with "one of the best controllers out there" (it isn't), the limiting factor is the controller, not the stepper driver.

The Trinamic drivers overcome this problem by *interpolating* the micro stepping. The accept a 16x microstep input, then interpolate it to 256x. This reduces load on the controller's interrupt routine.

I did a search for this, the first 3 pages returned nothing related to 3D printing or stepper motors at all.

Searching this, the only thing I could really find pointed to the issue I mentioned above, Marlin's step rate limitation:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic … wTLZzkog1s

It is also possible that you did not configure your stepper drivers correctly. For example, not setting the decay rate properly:

http://reprap.harleystudio.co.za/stepst … d-drv8825/

http://ebldc.com/?p=86

As for the benefits of 32x micro stepping:

The top was printed at 16x. The bottom, 32x.

I have no doubt that you have experiences. But without understanding the underlying theory, you are making statements that are not grounded in truth...and that's not good for anyone.

carl_m1968 wrote:

I doubt the regular generic 1.8 step motors most of us buy and use will even work. Many have issues doing 32x depending on their quality.

Yes, those will work. That's what was used in the review videos.

I also doubt very much your claim about folks "having issues" with 32x. Example?

On my 3Dstuffmaker I had, the extruder motor would not run if I set it for 32X and  the Y motor would start shifting layers when set to 32X. This was on an Azteeg X1 board. One of the best controllers out there. I could swap the motor and it was fine, or I could set it to 16X and never have an issue. So I could care less what you think, I am simply basing my claim on experience and the fact I have built and run 3 different printers over the years. I think I have some expertise and experience in the field just like you. There are even forums talking about the issues if you did a quick Google search. Just Google motor not working at 32X or motor skips at 32X just to name a few. It was how I found that 32X was the cause of my issues at that time, and that was 3 years ago.

I doubt the regular generic 1.8 step motors most of us buy and use will even work. Many have issues doing 32x depending on their quality.

Yes, those will work. That's what was used in the review videos.

I also doubt very much your claim about folks "having issues" with 32x. Example?

Features:
Hardware compatible with StepStick and Pololu A4988
Drive capability up to 1.2A continuous coil current (>2A peak)
Step/Dir interface with microstep interpolation (up to 256 microsteps)
Motor voltage: 4.75...46V
stealthChop - for quiet operation and smooth motion
spreadCycle - highly dynamic motor control chopper

Reviews:

Further infos on the GitHub project page: github.com/watterott/SilentStepStick

A small quantity are available through Filastruder - the OEM (Watterott) is currently backordered.