Tarocco

Just a heads up. You can now buy the controllers via Tindie

https://www.tindie.com/products/ottoragam/tarocco/

During the past few days I was able to burn the firmware and begin testing the
new Tarocco boards. I plan to ship half of the batch first, as soon as I'm done
testing the boards (probably next week), so those of you who ordered the
controller without a servomotor can begin to use them. The second half of the
batch will likely be shipped in the following week. The servomotors should be
ready by the second week of March.

I've uploaded the final design files for Tarocco and the BOM tothe repo.

At just 3 days from the end of the campaign, the project is just 800 dolllars away from the goal.

Now is the time to get your own board at https://www.crowdsupply.com/citrus-cnc/tarocco

The Crowdsupply funding campaign is now live! If you find the project useful please consider backing it.

https://www.crowdsupply.com/citrus-cnc/tarocco

I borrowed a Prusa i3 from a friend. I wanted to show the performance of the 30W motors I got, so I made a NEMA17 adapter from a piece of acrilyc and replaced the X axis stepper with my servomotor.

But it has 3 times the mechanical output power!

I used one of the available headers on the MKS board to supply the signals to my controller, and removed the stepper driver from its socket.

After getting familiar with the 3D printing software (I used Repetier), I was able to print the classic ship thingy.

Unfortunately the printer only had space for my servomotor on the X axis, and I didn't wanted to modify it as it was not mine. The good thing is that I have an old router available for more testing. I just need to replace the steppers with the servomotors and do some testing!

I'm planning to provide a suitable motor for use with Tarocco for those who don't want to go through the trouble of selecting a motor and feedback sensor.

Last week I got some DC servomotors to test with Tarocco. They are 24V 30W units, with a maximum angular speed of 4000 rpm, and they come with a factory installer optical encoder. The encoder wheel has 360 divisions, so the encoder provides 1440 pulses per revolution.

Physically, the motor's body is 38 mm (1.5 in) in diameter, and it has a 5 mm shaft, so it can be used to replace NEMA17 and NEMA23 motors. I'm planning to swap the steppers on an off the shelf 3D printer with brushed motors and see how the conversion goes, hopefully the frame will be able to handle the increased speed of the motors. Keep tuned for more!

I've just begun uploading the source files to the Tarocco Github repo. If you wanted to know more about Tarocco, well, now's your chance!

Almost a year ago I started making my own brushed DC motor controller, after having difficulties finding a commercial unit with the right features, within my budget. As of today, I'm using the controller to successfully run a 120 pund class milling machine. However, I wasn't entirely satisfied with the first version of my controller, so I decided to improve it.

And for anyone interested on having a ready made controller, there will be a Crwodsupply campaing launching very soon. You can sign up to get the relevant notifications here: https://www.crowdsupply.com/citrus-cnc/tarocco