SainSmart 5 Axis Breakout Board for Stepper Motor Driver CNC Mill

First time building/using a CNC machine - 3 axis router.Bought this one because each axis use 4 pins (or ports, or slots) for the output.Some of the other breakout boards have a pin for STEP and DIR, then the ENA and +5 are shared between the rest; I felt this would cause a lot of splices and sharing of contacts, where this board would keep all of the connections quite simple and clean. And it does.2nd reason for choosing this board was because I could power it off a small, cheap, and more reliable power 5v supply.You can use the USB power port, OR, a 5 volt supply.I don't have much luck with long-term use of USB ports, I felt this would eventually vibrate itself into making an unreliable connection (Just like my cell phone's port).Also, I didn't want an internal power strip with a USB adapter plugged into it.3rd reason, was because it came with a parallel cable.The one supplies is to short, and I'll have to buy a longer one anyway, but it got me started.Mach 3 instructions were simple to follow. Even though it was my first time opening the software, the supplied pictures told me exactly how to set it up, and it all worked first try.One problem I have is with the relay, I'm using the NO slot, connected to a contactor to turn on the router spindle. The second Windows boots, it kicks the router on.If I use the NC slot, the router wound run until Windows boots turning it off. I don't know if its a computer or software problem yet, but I doubt its a problem with the board.Plan to overcome this is to use an external relay breakout board connected to one of the outputs on the unused axis.Not sure if this will work yet, but worth a shot.One thing I don't like is the color of the LED's.I've always known a red light to be bad.On this board, red light = good.Power light, redE-Stop switch not activated, redlimit switches not hit, redSeems silly, but I would have preferred them to be green.In my mind, green = good.Enough ranting,I have included a picture that helped me when wiring this up. Might help you too.Followup:Turns out the relay problem was a Mach3 Software setting issue.Instructions didn't have "Active Low" selected.Checked this, works perfectly now.

I used this board to control a linux cnc setup and the thing is rock solid and is controlling 2 Nema 23 Stepper motors and 1 Nema 34 1200 oz motor running with 60v DC. If you setup everything properly, it will function perfectly fine. It isn't very complicated to use and is kind of self evident.SO, if you're going to use it. Build a linuxcnc setup and it will be a breeze.

This would have been 5 stars Big surprise! The manual sucks. So what's new? However, if you have a basic understanding of this type of break out board it is not difficult to use. I am using LinuxCNC to talk to it. Works right out of the box. No drivers need be installed.It comes with an old version of Mach3 but I didn't use it.

I had purchased this BoB after many hours of frustration trying to get a DB-25 6-axis BoB from a different source to work for several hours but with no luck.I used the setup manual (on CD rom) to make the correct settings in Mach 3, wired the board in, and it worked on the first try.I'm using a UC-100 USB controller in conjunction with this BoB, I used Mach 3 demo to set it up, and I already have UCCNC serialed to the controller. Board works flawlessly with both Mach3 and UCCNC.I am very happy about this purchase and the aggravation it ended for me.

After designing a few CNC machines, I always have to kludge together an interface between the computer and the electronics. This is a nice package with terminal strips built-in. As a bonus, it taps the USB port for 5v Power so you don't need an external transformer. Add that with a low price... and it is just a deal I could not pass up.It has LEDs to show the input signals... I didn't notice that when I ordered it... sweet!I also wanted to point out that the documentation IS INCLUDED... it's on a small CD in PDF format.Well worth the money.

Every CNC breakout board I've ever used had a female connector and used standard MtM DB25 shielded cables. None of the product pictures show the connector so I just assumed it was like all the others...Guess who doesn't have a female DB25 gender changer and has jobs to run? This guy. :-(Dropping to one star. My old board happily ran steppers at 50kHz. I had to reconfigure everything to get this board to be stable. It tops out a bit under 5kHz. Also spent far too much time troubleshooting erratic behavior on the A and B axis pins. At least one was inverted, outputting 4.3V when low and 0.2V when high. All leaked some voltage when low. Oscilloscope shows quite a bit of noise on the 5V output pins.

I'm 47 years old and I really had very few problems figuring out how to use this board and I had zero experience with CNC equipment before starting my plasma table project. There is documentation included with this board (however, it is written in Chi-English, but hey, get used to it. It's the way the world is now). Plus if you look around YouTube there are videos showing this or similar boards and how to wire them up and use them. I see no reason to give this any less than 5 stars

The headline says it all. Solid board, but the relay flipping on during startup makes it useless for controlling a plasma torch or whatnot. Mild disappointment but not really that bad since the relay doesn't use up any pins. The 4-pin molex KK connector headers are a really nice touch, saved a lot of headache switching motors around.