Using external driver expansion board with duet 2 wifi

baird1fa

Hello. I’m planning to use the duet 2 wifi with the external driver expansion board and I just noticed that I need more digital inputs than than the available x,y,z,e0,e1 that are on the board. There are more inputs on the expansion header but they are not included on the external driver board.

Any suggestion on how to use them or tie into them easily?

fcwilt

@baird1fa

Any particular reason you want to use a previous generation board?

Frederick

baird1fa

@fcwilt

Cost. The duet 2 wifi is far less expensive than the duet 3 and it has a less expensive expansion board to run external drivers. The CAN boards for a single external stepper in addition to the duet 3 makes for a very expensive CNC board.

o_lampe

@baird1fa said in Using external driver expansion board with duet 2 wifi:

Any suggestion on how to use them or tie into them easily?

If there was an (male2female) 50pin extension cable, you could cut out the extra pins you require and solder wires to them.
Or solder wires to the backside of the extension board.

fcwilt

@baird1fa said in Using external driver expansion board with duet 2 wifi:

@fcwilt

Cost. The duet 2 wifi is far less expensive than the duet 3 and it has a less expensive expansion board to run external drivers. The CAN boards for a single external stepper in addition to the duet 3 makes for a very expensive CNC board.

How many external steppers do you need?

Will you be using the on-board stepper drivers?

Thanks.

Frederick

dc42

@baird1fa is Duet 3 Mini not suitable for your project?

baird1fa

@fcwilt

I’m using 4 external drivers to run 48 V to my Nema 34 steppers. I’m not using any of the on board steppers.

baird1fa

@o_lampe

I’ve been scouring Amazon for such a thing but can only find a 40pin Version for the Rpi.

Do you know of such a beast?

baird1fa

@o_lampe

I ended up ordering a long ribbon cable and just split some of the wires out. I don’t know how to post a photo or I would. Show what I did.