Beginner question

tommylight wrote:

Sorry but i am sure i answered the same question but must have been another thread.

I think you did - I recall reading nearly the exact same answer not long ago. But sometimes finding the post that you know you've seen becomes elusive!

But I think you've answered even better than last time!

Servos is really the dream, but with 3 servos and the mesa bords it will be between $1150-1720. And with steppers it will be $400
If i buy boards from mesa site, and motor from aliexpress.
Not sure yet which way to go.

Traktor1Tarzan wrote:

Servos is really the dream, but with 3 servos and the mesa bords it will be between $1150-1720. And with steppers it will be $400
If i buy boards from mesa site, and motor from aliexpress.
Not sure yet which way to go.

Not really true.

You can get 750Watt ac servos with drives for 170 a set with cables, that's about 500 then 200 mesa go kit, then power supply etc.... 100.

800.00, versus 400 and 10 times better and stronger. Do your self a favor and save up for the servo's. you will regret it if you don't. especially for milling machine.
Just my .314838 cents.

Also don't forget with steppers you still need a stepper drive between the motor and the Mesa board(s). The price for a cheap Chinese 750w servo from ebay is more like $270.
You could also look at something sort of in between with the new closed loop steppers. A new nema34 motor and drive combo runs around $150.

Thanks for the answers. It makes it a lot easier to make good choices.
Are the servos difificult to tune?

They can be easy or hard, it depends on a lot of factors. But for the most part tuning a velocity mode servo usually isn't very hard unless there is a problem somewhere. Position mode drives (ones that take step/dir commands like a stepper motor) usually have built in self/auto tuning. (One with only a torque input command are often quite a bit trickier.)