I am attempting to use the ProDriver to drive the 125 oz/in stepper motor (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13656) with the intent of providing only basic functionality for movement and will be moving to a more powerful motor driver for the final design. I am running the motor off of a bench top power supply so that I can control and limit current since this motor has a higher limit than the board, but I’m unable to get the motor to drive a lead screw with no load. The driver board will shut off at random times and I have to reset sometimes 5-6x to get any movement. I know that there are current overload conditions which cause the board to shut down but I am keeping the current set to below 0.4 A on my supply to prevent this. The motor seems to work OK when there is no load applied, but is very loud and random shutdowns will occur. This occurs even when the board is cold so I’m guessing it isn’t thermal related. It never feels warm.
I’ve tried the setup with multiple different Arduino boards, replaced connector wires, tried wall power supplies, all to no avail. I don’t have any other motors other than very small steppers to use but they are not powerful enough to turn the screw. Is this motor not compatible with the board due to power requirements? It is recommended on the page for the ProDriver and that’s why I chose it, along with the fact that my end goal is to control a secondary head on my Shapeoko CNC.
Is the Big Easy driver a better choice to drive a motor of this size? Or is there a different driver I should use which can sufficiently drive a lead screw and carriage?