Using raspberry pi to control 4 stepper motors

Question

For a hobby-project I would like to control 4 nema23 stepper motors for a Cartesian cnc-like setup using a raspberry pi.

According to this tutorial, it should work in principle using a TB6600 Motor driver: https://danielwilczak101.medium.com/control-a-stepper-motor-using-python-and-a-raspberry-pi-11f67d5a8d6d

I would rather avoid using a controller board and have full control over the motors from code. My understanding is that these boards communicate using higher-level G-codes.

So my question is, would that work? What kind of power source would be necessary?

Answer 1

You need a stepper driver. If you are calling the TB6600 board a controller board then you need it. You need one per stepper.

The TB6600 board does not use G-code.

If you want to use G-code you will have to translate the G-code into the stepper movements required. That is a difficult problem. I'd say too difficult for a hobby project.