KEYESTUDIO CNC DIY Kit-Development Board for Arduino R3+GRBL CNC Shield V3+4pcs DRV8825 Stepper Motor Driver+USB Cable

Updated review after resolving several problems.The shield seems to be made correctly and seems to work fine at first. The fuse on the shield is much too low for running motors with any real current. As soon as I got over about 1/2 amp the fuse blew. This seems to be a common issue. The fuse is really hard to get to in order to replace it. It would be nice to have this fuse converted to something that the user can set or change easily.The setup instructions are difficult to find, difficult to read, and not clear as the company sells this kit with several different stepper drivers and seems to use the same assembly instructions for all of them, even though the driver installation is reversed. I had to look at the pinouts on the shield and on the stepper driver board to install them correctly as the images shown on Amazon at the time were incorrect. These seem to have been updated. The drivers are not a Pololu driver breakout and are missing the VREF test pad to set the driver current, or the pad is hidden and not marked. This means you must have a current meter and make an adapter cable to set the current for the driver. I suspect this gives a lower current value than is true, but I can't tell for sure.In order for me to give five stars, the seller needed to:1. Provide accurate instructions, including how to set the current for the driver.2. Replace the fuse with one capable of handling the maximum load possible when running all four drivers at the same time, or make the fuse easily replaceable so the user can adjust the fuse to the appropriate level.3. Included all the Pololu test points on the driver breakout they advertised as Pololu, or remove the claim that the driver breakout is Pololu.

I was kind of amazed at how quickly all of my project came together with this. I though I had days worth of work to wire up my stepper motor. Turned out that I had it working in about an hour. The documentation for these parts by keyestudio is reasonably good. The boards mated and worked. I did need to dig up some jumpers to put the stepper drivers in the 1/32 step mode, but other than that everything I needed was included to get the stepper motor (I purchased separately) to start moving . I did have trouble getting the arduino IDE (not a keyestudio software) to work on my Mac, but I run windows 7 in parallels and the IDE worked fine there so that's what I'm doing. Seems like quality parts. There was a little guesswork when connecting limit switches. The X+ and X- are both on the same pin. You have to use logic in your design to "know" which limit switch you are moving toward to "know" which one was the one that tripped.

Worked really well. getting the software up and running can be a bit difficult. Google the name of the item and you'll come across a wiki and several GitHub pages which will help you through that. I thought I fried the driver's but it turned out I didn't which was nice. Don't play with the little potentiometer on the driver's unless you need to. That's what made me think I fried it. You'll need an external power supply to run this. Make sure you don't get one that's too big. Mine only goes down to 18V but the SHEILD (NOT THE UNO) can take up to 30VDC. Don't pump that through the Uno! You will lose all your magic blue smoke. The drivers are also good quality ones. They're supposed to be high current drivers too.

Just a heads up, the photo on here has the drivers (the small boards) backwards. So if you assemble it like they have it you will ruin the board. I ordered a different brand to replace this board.

TI DRV8825 drivers are not suitable for use with high-current and low inductance / low resistance stepper motors, but can be made to work with them with the addition of diode smoothers. Recommend 15 Ohm or 30 Ohm NEMA 42, for example. Current sense resistors are too low value (100 mOhm), which violates TI minimum recommended Vref of 1 Volt; this is typical of Pololu driver clones. Very nice set if you understand what you are buying; I purchased two, and may buy more. I substituted Leonardo for Uno board for crystal accuracy.

The breakout board is very nice and works perfectly. Good build quality, lots of options, and good fits.Stepper Drivers work.... they are just drivers.... as expected, noisy, and jittery. No fault to these guys, just better option available now. I replaced them with TMC2100s.The arduino clone however caused me many issues. Converting a vinyl cutter, the board would randomly reset, or stop responding as the spindle commands were sent.Tried flashing multiple firmwares, nothing helped.Bought a genuine arduino uno, and everything works great now with no other changes.So if you want a nice compact breakout board this is a good bet, but you can get an identical one without the clone arduino on ebay for much cheaper than this kit.

Using UNO on cnc router. Love the larger USB connecter for strength vs micro USB and the included USB cable has good noise rejection. Swapped from another UNO that has a micro USB because it kept picking up interference through the USB and locking up. Not a problem on this one! Not using the included motor drivers yet as I have standalone ones but easy to wire to either so leaves a great upgrade path of needed.

The stepper drivers were fine and the uno was fine to but unfortunately the grbl shield was only able to go one direction on the x axis. I spent so much time messing around the firmware and checking my connections, Febup I Iborrowed my friends grbl shield and used it on the key studio uno and everything worked fine. So it was the grbl shield that was faulty. Looks like there is no quality check.

I was concerned with the brand having used different brands before. This one seems to be the same quality as the others I have used for other projects. The packaging was great, probably better than most electronics I purchase.