Two Stepper Motors on one axis

[BrianV]

Just curious, I have found very little information on connecting 2 motors for my X-axis. I have the 4-axis board of yours and two 23-200-DS8 200oz/in 1.8 Deg 3vdc 3amp 1r stepper motors.
Could you give any advise on wiring these up for x-axis gantry.
Do I simply wire them together on x-axis or one on x-axis and one on a-axis?
I am also using linuxcnc software.

[BrianV]

Great question. The reason you find very little info, is that you can’t just wire two motors to the same driver. Not a wise idea.
Instead, you “Mirror” the second axis. You can do this two ways:

1. The Bodge. You can physically cut some traces on the PC board to disconnect the A-axis ‘Step and Direction’ signals from the input connector, then run the Step and Direction signals from, say, the X-axis signals into the D connector, and route them over to the A-Axis also. Then you have one chip driving one motor, but both chips receiving the same input signals.
2. The right way. In the LinuxCNC STEPCONFIG utility, you can specify what signals are output to what pins. Just make the A-Axis into another X-Axis highlighted in the image below. You can mirror any axis in this manner.
   

I would imagine there would be similar configuration settings for all CNC software.

Let me know how it works out!

[Author]

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