How to Control Stepper Motors with Arduino using a GRBL CNC Shield!

welcome back to the Master Tech and in today's video I'm going to show you how to use a CNC shield with an Arduino Uno to control stepper Motors [Music] for this project in total you'll need an Arduino Uno a CNC Shield compatible with an Arduino Uno a Serial cable for connection between the computer and the Arduino a DC power supply between 12 and 24 volts some stepper motor controllers and of course your actual stepper Motors now they are great CNC Shield kits available so that you don't have to know what Shield to get what controllers are compatible with those what motors to get on top of that so I will leave a link to the kit that I'll be using in this video in the description of this video below if you want to get the exact same stuff that I'm using in this video the one thing the kit that I'm using didn't come with was a DC power supply and it also only included one stepper motor so you will have to order some extra stepper Motors and you'll have to make sure you have a DC power supply now let's get into the setup these physical components go together really easily but you need to be careful on a few items the entire CNC Shield should plug into the top of your Arduino Uno but you need to make sure you get the port alignment correct the CNC Shield isn't going to use every single pin so make sure you start at the side away from the USB controller by analog pin A5 and the TX RX pins now most of the stepper motor controllers that you'll buy will come with a heatsink for their main circuit chip and when you put this heatsink on you need to be very careful it doesn't touch the side pins because you can cause a short and permanently damage it the six pins right below each capacitor on the CNC Shield are for selecting what step increment you want them to work in and every CNC Shield manufacturer can provide exactly what the pin outs do but I'm just going to use the middle pins on mine because that means one quarter step increments the most important thing to keep in mind when putting these stepper controllers into your CNC Shield is that there's an enable pin on the underside that you can see on your controller and it needs to line up with the enable pin on your CNC Shield if you put it in backwards you can fry one of these stepper motor controllers and permanently damage the electrical components don't ask me how I know just take my word for it you'll also need to hook up your DC power supply to the positive and negative leads on this board but you can wait to do that or at least wait to plug it into the wall outlet until everything else is ready to go so you're not dealing with live voltage and most stepper Motors are going to be coming with this four wire cable to connect the motor to the controllers and don't actually worry too much about orientation on here because even if it seems like it's working backwards from how you want it to like it rotates clockwise when you would hope it would be counterclockwise that's configurable from the software and it's really easy to just physically flip these pins later and that's going to be it for the physical setup now we just have to do a few quick items on our computer first you need to have the Arduino IDE download and installed it's completely free it's open source and I'll leave a link to it in the description of the video below as well and then you're also going to have to download the gerbil which is spelled grbl all caps but I believe it's typically pronounced gerbil you'll need that library for the Arduino as well and you guessed it there will be a link to it in the description of the video as well so I'm gonna try to leave links to everything you'd need that I reference in this video so you can just get everything from this video now when you download the gerbil zip file uh you need to extract it go into it and then copy the entire folder labeled grbl and copy it into your Arduino libraries folder this is typically found inside documents Arduino libraries and then that's where you want to paste the gerbil folder now open your Arduino IDE go to file examples and then all the way down at the bottom where it says custom libraries examples and you should see your gerbil folder go into there and there's probably only going to be one and it should be upload open that up and this code is so basic you're probably going to think this isn't the whole thing but there's literally only one operational line of code in here and it's telling your Arduino to include the gerbil live library and that really is all we're gonna do because we're actually going to be controlling the Arduino from a G-Code processing software which we're going to talk about more in just a second so now plug your Arduino board in using the serial cable but I would still recommend not plugging in the power supply yet and you should be able to select your board from the drop down menu once you have it plugged in just hit the upload button in the Arduino IDE to send this upload program that we have open to your Arduino and basically put the gerbil package on your Arduino and now we're done with the Arduino IDE everything else is going to be handled by the next tool we're going to talk about which is the universal G-Code sender G-Code is the most common CNC programming language and the universal G-Code sender is going to allow us to convert G-Code projects into something that the gerbil language can understand of course the link to download the universal G-Code sender will be right below the other links in the description of the video so go ahead and grab that there once you download and extract everything from that zip file just open it up and go to the bin folder and inside there you'll see the executables to actually open the software open it up and you'll see options at the top for firmware and you want to make sure grbl gerbil is selected and for Port you should be able to hit that refresh button until your Port automatically populates it's trying to detect any compatible board so just hitting those refresh arrows should work but you are able to manually point it at a board as well and then make sure your Bot is set to 115 200 it just needs to be that once those settings are good go ahead and hit the button next to Firmware that looks like a plug going into an extension cord this is the connect button hopefully it goes orange for you right away that means it's successfully connected and online if it's not orange check your port check your baud rate check that you have it set up for gerbil make sure that the board is plugged in but you still don't need the DC power supply plugged in just yet now if it is orange for you now is the time where I would plug that additional DC power supply in I I would plug it into the wall outlet or extension cord whatever you're using and power the CNC Shield up now with that 12 to 24 volts DC now it's time to make these stepper Motors move if you only have one motor plugged in initially like me just figure out what x y z or a it's plugged into on your board and hit those jog buttons in the jog menu of the universal G-Code sender to get it to turn one way or another you can play with the settings to make it turn further or less far and it's a lot easier to tell exactly what the motor is doing if you put a piece of tape on the end of the motor shaft like this to test all three of your stepper controllers with just one motor you can just take turns plugging it into one different axis motor controller at a time but make sure you unplug the DC power supply between moving the motor around so you're not doing that with live voltage on the board and just test all three ports of course ideally if you have three stepper Motors plug all three of them in and test bump them all and you can even find some sample g code from a free Project online and load it into this and see your different stepper Motors working at the same time obviously they're not hooked up to a Gantry system or anything yet so you're not going to be cutting and welding and drilling right away but this is really all it takes to get these tested and once all three of these stepper motors have been tested you have successfully fully set up the environment you need for a DIY open source CNC machine and so that brings me to the end of this tutorial and I want to take a quick moment to thank the sponsor of this video it's you guys it's my viewers and subscribers on my YouTube everyone who leaves comments and helpful feedback and has helped me grow the channel in the last year you guys are the reason I'm able to make content like this and that I've been able to consistently grow the channel I'd like to do a full tutorial on how to create your own CNC machine from scratch with these sorts of Open Source electronic components but I definitely need your guys support my first patreon supporter Dale T has been been heavily involved in the growth of this Channel and I would not be able to have a Master Tech where it is right now without him he's helped me brainstorming some of our biggest projects he's contributed artwork to the full platformer game we built in Python and patreon gives you my direct messaging link as well as access to exclusive Lemaster type merchandise so if you guys want to help me continue the growth of the channel then consider becoming a patreon Super supporter in the link below all the other links in the description of this video and every single like every comment on a video every subscriber is hugely encouraging to me and helps me grow the channel more as always thanks for watching good luck with your projects until next time bye