i already have few 12V PSU to play with, and its also easily available in form of PC ATX PSU sold everywhere locally. mosfets in the stepper driver maybe happy with higher voltage, who knows?
I have many PC PSUs as well, they should be OK for testing. I agree that for a big CNC 12V is not enough, tho my choice would be to go with 48V or more, I actually found cheap enough toroidal transformer, so making my own PSU is not out of the question yet.
about trusting the china design, well maybe there's few caps and mosfets need replacement in case of smoke comes out, but i'm not going to trust brand name either. i had Gigabyte brand ATX PSU that failed much earlier than no name brand PSU, i have HP (USA?) Z800 server PC workstation coming this way with PSU issues discussed everywhere in the net, so even USA brand is not a bulletproof product. but everybody is free to choose what they like.
I have no PSU design experience, bus as far as I understand brand like MeanWell ads more protection features as well. Talking about good known brands making mistakes – I had 500Eur worth brand new Asus server/workstation motherboard literally exploding to my face – one cap blew up and flied straight to my neck and burned my neck a little (no permanent damage). And it wasn't my mistake, something went wrong with CPU power delivery. It killed one of two 8 core CPUs in the process. Tho Asus support was good, they dispatched new motherboard right away, delivery person whom delivered new board took old board and dead CPU. Asus compensated for dead CPU as well. I have to mention one bad thing – that "new" board was refurbished and signs of wear was visible, so I asked them to fix my broken board that was actually new, not refurbished. And they did, they send back my fixed board and took replacement back.
The moral is – no one is perfect, tho extra cost for well known brand includes better support, arguably better components, features and they need to keep their name "clean" even in bad situations
Z800? Ancient 1366 double socket? I have Intel S5520SC motherboard and couple of X5647 collecting dust
yes thats why i'm planning to mod it to be connected to a dc or bldc motor later to become a lathe, and also thats why i have to go to the hassle to build a converter circuit to read its rpm to thermistor voltage (close loop rpm control) to make it reprap/marlin compatible, a stepper motor wont need such converter.
I can't understand why you want to put a lathe on your CNC mill
I'm not an expert on the matter but if you make your own ESC you can track motor spin speed via MCU or hack prebuilt driver MCU to get RPM, check Electronoob videos
that's fundamental to how stepper drivers work. Steppers are big inductors so the higher the driver voltage the faster you can reach max current, iow the higher the voltage the faster you can step without losing all your torque. I'd say 24V is a bare minimum
Any useful links for dummies on this topic?
P.S. langwadt – I really want to build stepper driver board with powerstep01 as well, do you have any notes, warnings on PCB design? Any interference, instability issues that I should know about? How far from recommended design yours PCB is? I'm not sure at this point, but I want to try to make it modular – every driver on its own PCB and use aviation plugs and solder their wires as close to powerstep01 as possible, but still leave plenty space for additional aluminum heat sink if needed. What you think about this? I bet those drivers work way more silent and smoother than cheap drivers...