SainSmart CNC TB6560 3 Axis 3.5A Stepper Motor

The center (Y axis) driver will not work at all. This leaves me to sweat wires into the center section and to get a standalone driver to drive the Y axis. After my purchase, I got onto forums and others have had a variety of problems with this type of stepper driver module. If given enough time, I could probably find and repair the problem. The way I understand...most all the time, problems with this board are located primarily in the opto-isolators and many times there are timing problems because these opto's are so slow, so there are missed steps. The price is attractive, but not really a good buy. The seller did ship very quickly, and it arrived in a very timewise fashion, in very good packaging.I am making a revision to this review. After much frustration, a video on YouTube.com revealed the online manual that is available does not contain the correct assignments for the Y axis pin assignment. This is what had me messed up.The correct assignments for the MACH3 Motor Outputs are as follows:Motor OutputsX Enabled Step Pin 1 Dir Pin 7 Step Port 1 Dir Port 1Y Enabled Step Pin 8 Dir Pin 3 Step Port 1 Dir Port 1Z Enabled Step Pin 5 Dir Pin 4 Step Port 1 Dir Port 1I hope this helps others who are having the same issue.

I bought this board on a whim for a CNC project I am working on. My initial gut reaction was not good as there was rust on the IEEE connector and some white paste on the bottom of the board. It is a well build board, and I had this up and running with MACH 3 and linux CNC in minutes. The CD I got was cracked, but after a time of searching relentlessly on the web, I found the documentation for it. There are also several blog posts with instructions on how to connect it and set the switches. I may have gotten lucky as some have complained about noise and optical isolation issues, but the board does work well and I would recommend it.Amazon does recommend a USB to Parallel adapter for this located here. C2G / Cables to Go 16899 USB To DB25 IEEE-1284 Parallel Printer Adapter Cable, 6 Feet This will not work with this device! That device will only setup USB printer support, and has no hardware address that can be accessed from MACH 3 or LINUX CNC.Good luck to all you DIY folks!

The price is great, you could not source all the parts for $50,I will definately buy again.I particuarly like the removable output connectors.The interface circuits (optoisolators) are all in a plug in connector row too. This might be an advantage for repair, but unfortunately I think the IC connections themselves are likely to be the biggest problem. I like things soldered in for thisa type of application and do wish they'd been less creative...though it has not proved a problem so far.I took a star away because the mini-CD shipped with it was faulty.

So far so good. Driving nema 17 motors like a champ. I did not even bother with the cd. There is a manual posted online with the correct pinout, which dot me most of the way there. Haven't tried the relay control or limit switches yet. Keep in mind that this board has gone through several revisions, so maybe I just got lucky.

The product is as shown in the store; it lacks comprehensive documentation and didn't performvery well when used.Documentation can be found on the web if searched for. The most important for me was thereverse-engineered schematic found at www (dot) drkfs (dot) net (slash) REVERSESTEPPER (dot) htmWhen connected to my computer, with a properly configured MACH3 setup, it would not stepthe X axis. Y and Z both worked for test purposes. After much frustration, I gave up andbought a breakout board and 3 stepper motor drivers from kelling (dot) com.That it worked at all makes it worth two stars, but I probably won't ever use the device again.

Checking on some common forums you can see this board has all kinds of issues. The opto-isolators don't actually isolate the board from the computer as the grounds are common on the entire board - entirely defeating the purpose of opto-isolation. The timing must be slowed down to unbelievably poor stepping rates to make the board work. I tested the board out with several different kinds of steppers and all required amperage settings down in the 25% range to reduce noise. It does not run well at all at 24v and 12v the motors were still skipping steps and unable to make full rotations even at speeds slower than 400pps.The one thing I didn't experience were the overheating issues of the voltage regulators for control circuitry. Problems abound with this board.Also take note that the documentation incorrectly labels the parallel port pins.

the stepper works great and I like it but the serial cable and the setup disk don't work properly. Thank you

The best support I have ever get.I faced many problem to start the work. and the support team guide me step by step to fix it. also they change the card they send to me for free :).I am satisfied tooooo much.