Hey Alex, hey Mike @MustCreateThings, hey all,
in a datasheet of a stepper driver that supports motors with brake, you can find the conditions in which you want the brake to be activated:
Brake is fixed at:
- Alarm Signal active
- Enable Signal inactive
- Error in the power connection of the motor
- Error in the power connection of the brake
This means, you would need a logic that checks these four points, that are the cases where the system itself still has power (not the “hard” power cutoff of entire system) but you need to have the brake activated (you want that when the stepper’s electromagnetic detent / holding current is gone for some reason to prevent movable parts move by themselves because of gravity then).
That’s what I intended to implement. Of course if you wire the Z brake just with a DC power from the controller, you have some functionality too, but activating the brake is limited to the case when the controller is powered off.
I would want that the motor is braked also in situations when controller is still powered on, e.g. on emergency stopped mode or on motor power failure.
Should you want to have the same connectors as on Onefinity, here I once wrote a post on making your own stepper cables for Buildbotics and Onefinity.
You may also while you’re at it replace all these flimsy tin-plated Molex/Amphenol connectors by retrofitting better, industrial circular connectors and adding shielding and PE wire to the stepper cables on Buildbotics and Onefinity.
By the way, on…