Selecting the stepper motor:

As per the requirement of the mechanical design team. I selected a Nema 17 with 5.5kg-cm torque to drive the motor Axis. we select 2 for running the XY axis in core XY and one for Extruder of the same configuration.

Nema 17 with 5.5kg-cm.

For more data, I refer to this datasheet of NEMA 17.

Selecting the stepperDriver:

For running the stepper motor I will require a Stepper driver. For which I could have many options. But after discussion and considering the Marline driver configuration availability and what we have in the lab we go with A4988as a motor driver. As it fully fills all the needs to run the motors.

A4988 Stepper driver.

For more specifications, I refer to this Datasheet on the A4998 Stepper motor driver .

Selecting the CNC stepper driver shield:

There are so many types of CNC stepper driver shields Available in the market.Out of which we have Arduino CNC V3 shield, Ramp MKS 1.4 V, And Ramp 1.4 CNC shield. I select ramp 1.4 CNC shield because we have it more than one in our lab and also because of its strong community support.

Ramp 1.4 board.

For more specifications, I refer to this guideline on the Wikipedia on Ramp 1.4.

Selecting the controller board:

As the ramp 1.4 boards are built for Arduino mega 2560 we have no other option for selecting the controller board.

Arduino Mega 2560.

For more specifications, I refer to this guideline on the Arduino Mega 2560.

Selecting power supply:

As per the requirement of current consumption and voltage requirement for electric components for our machine I chose 12V 5A power more adept for powering up the machine.

12V 5A power supply.

You can check the power supply specification I refer to this Power supply datasheet.

Testing stepper motor and stepper motor driver:

I want to test the stepper motor for setting up our electronic conductive Ink printer. As we are going to use marlin firmware but it is not ready. So I decided to test the stepper motor first. We start with testing individual stepper motors for which I refer to a blog from last-minute engineering "Control Stepper Motor with A4988 Driver Module & Arduino".

Making connections for stepper motor.

      
        // Define pin connections & motor's steps per revolution
        const int dirPin = 2;
        const int stepPin = 3;
        const int stepsPerRevolution = 200;
        
        void setup()
        {
          // Declare pins as Outputs
          pinMode(stepPin, OUTPUT);
          pinMode(dirPin, OUTPUT);
        }
        void loop()
        {
          // Set motor direction clockwise
          digitalWrite(dirPin, HIGH);
        
          // Spin motor slowly
          for(int x = 0; x < stepsPerRevolution; x++)
          {
            digitalWrite(stepPin, HIGH);
            delayMicroseconds(2000);
            digitalWrite(stepPin, LOW);
            delayMicroseconds(2000);
          }
          delay(1000); // Wait a second
          
          // Set motor direction counterclockwise
          digitalWrite(dirPin, LOW);
        
          // Spin motor quickly
          for(int x = 0; x < stepsPerRevolution; x++)
          {
            digitalWrite(stepPin, HIGH);
            delayMicroseconds(1000);
            digitalWrite(stepPin, LOW);
            delayMicroseconds(1000);
          }
          delay(1000); // Wait a second
        }
        
        

Code I use to run the stepper motor.

Testing stepper motor with ramp 1.4 shields:

After testing motors individually. I tried to run them on the Ramp 1.4 shield. For that, I refer to this site about ramp 1.4. I assemble the motor drivers on it. Attach the 12V 5A supply to the board and set everything ready to test except the code. I use the same test code to try to run the motor on-ramp shield checking the dir and step pins from the schematic diagram of the ramp board for the X-axis motor. To know the pin no. for X-axis I refer to the ramp schematic diagram of the ramp. for X it is A0, and A1 for dir and steps respectively and uploads the code but it does not work. Then we check for supply for the ramp bord we check the driver supply 12 and 5 v and also the cable output testing continuity and lock testing. After several trials to run a stepper motor on Ramp 1.4 Finally I got this ramp lib Ramp-master which helped me in running the steppers using a ramped board.

Ramp 1.4 connection output design with various components as referance .

Above is a general connection output of various components with ramp shield.Which I prefer for connections also.

I use the code from Examples in liberty and custom it according to me to run a motor and in this way, I test motors on-ramp shield.
Arduino code used to test motors.

      
         
#include "PololuDriver.h"
#include "Ramps.h"

Ramps ramps = Ramps();
int d =500;

void setup() {
  // put your setup code here, to run once:

}

void loop() {
ramps.motorZ.stepOn();
delayMicroseconds(d);
ramps.motorZ.stepOff();

ramps.motorY.stepOn();
delayMicroseconds(d);
ramps.motorY.stepOff();


ramps.motorX.stepOn();
delayMicroseconds(d);
ramps.motorX.stepOff();

ramps.motorE.stepOn();
delayMicroseconds(d);
ramps.motorE.stepOff();
}

           
        

Costum Ramp shield Code.

All these steps helped me in running the steppers using ramp board successfully before configuring the hardware with Marlin.

Selection of Software part:

So after a long dissection, we all came to the point to use Marline as a base firmware for our CNC clay printing machine.s It is popular one and It has a lot of support from the community.
You can read more about marline in Devesh's blog. So currently we will focus on my journey of setting up the electronics for our machine.

Process flow for machine design.

Updating the firmware:

Uploding Marlin on Arduino bort.

I upload marline on an Arduino board. (note remove the ramp shield during uploading the code) and use Pronterface to control the firmware.