New 3020 CNC Controller Box

  I'm not happy with my current controller setup. It just looks terrible, consists of two separate boxes, with a hanging out a-axis stepper driver. My plans are to design and entirely new controller box with all new hardware (almost). The plan is to make it an affordable upgrade since I'm on a tight budget these days. That means no Gecko drives '-( In addition to the 4 axes, there will be a spindle controller and an Arduino for controlling the heaters on the 3D printer. The intention is to have a dual purpose box for both CNC routing and 3D printing.

Component List:
1x 200 x 400 x 40mm Enclosure
4x RATTM RTM5742A Stepper Drivers - Details
1x Generic 480Watt 24V 20A Power Supply
5x 5-Pin Twist-Lock Connectors
4x 12mm Assorted Connectors
1x SCR Motor Driver - Reused from original controller box
1x 5-Axis Isolated Breakout Board
1x 5V Isolated Regulator - To Power the Breakout Board

Later I will be adding an Arduino board to control the heaters as well as machining new front and rear panels to the box.

Stepper Motor Drivers - Rattm RTM5742A Review

I'm currently in the planning/ordering stage of  my build of a new controller box for the 3020 CNC router/printer. I've been looking around for motor drivers and there are a lot of cheap options and some expensive options. There are not many good options in the $20-$40 range. Gecko drives are of course always ideal, but $100 per axis is out of my budget. I have been hunting on eBay for a while and have previously posted on the notorious HY-DIV268N-5A. In my eBay searches  I also saw a few drives that looked similar the the HY-DIV268N-5A, but had are rumored to have performed much better. I wanted to try them out!

They appear to all be based on Leadshine and rebranded into at least two other names, Rattam and Wantai.


Rattam Motor RTM5740A
Price: $25

I have purchased 4x RTM5742A drives and plan to do some analysis of the hardware. I hope to get a good idea of the quality and share this with you.

Based on the ON Semiconductor LV8727. I have sadly found that there are several other boards based on the same IC for much cheaper, some as low as $10 each. Just search for "DD8727v1" on google or eBay.

To be continued....