I have built a juggling machine. Each arm is driven by a 4A 23mm stepper motor. The motors are each driven by a TB6600 set to 800 microsteps. By trial and error, I have found that the motors skip when the drivers are set at 2A (running at 36v) but not when set at 3A.
The motors are directly attached to the panto-graph arm mechanism. Each arm makes 81 start-and-stop revolutions per minute. The each arm is at rest for 25% of the time. I believe this causes the arms to jerk and induces error into the balls trajectory.
The obvious advantage of direct drive is simplicity. The next easiest options are belt drive or a geared stepper motor.
- Would a geared or belt drive help reduce the vibration in the mechanism?
- Would I be able to run the drivers at a lower power setting if I used gearing?