Synchronizing multiple TMC5240's

Question

I have come to experience, very painfully, that no matter what I try I cannot get two or more steppers running the TMC5240 to be driven in sync. I have tried SPI broadcast (separate CS pins fired simultaneously), providing a common clock source, etc. Has anyone figured out an effective way to trigger the motion synchronously?

BernhardDwersteg · Answer

Hi Keni, 
 you did it exactly right. Small differences still persist because of different internal state of the driver's ramp generators, i.e. the point of acceleration and velocity update is relative to the power-up time, occurring each 512 clock cycles. This in turn leads to time differences in the response to the commands, which can in turn lead to position differences when moving at high velocity. 
 However, if you need two axis working microstep synchronous, i.e. when mechanically tied to each other, you can output STEP&DIR signal from one driver and input it to the second one.

BernhardDwersteg · Answer

Unfortunately, the TMC5240 can output a STEP&DIR signal, but it cannot use it as an input. Therefore, the second driver has to be a TMC2240. It is a STEP&DIR input variant of the TMC5240, which does not feature the internal ramp generator. However, pinning and other functionality are identical.

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Synchronizing multiple TMC5240's