TB6560 Stepper Motor Driver versus GRBL

For a while now I’ve had an old TB6560 Stepper Motor Driver board kicking around, which never really saw much use. I used to drive it from a PC parallel port (remember those?) with a very big, ugly old desktop PC running LinuxCNC. Because of the size, this was pretty inconvenient. Recently, I decided to resurrect it and try to drive it from an Arduino Uno with GRBL. It took some time to find the pinout online, particularly since there are several variants of this board with completely different pinouts, so I decided to make notes here…

This manual appears to correspond to my 3 axis board: (TB6560 3 Axis Manual) and here’s the pinout that I’m currently using successfully:

LPT1 PinLPT1 FunctionArduino PinGRBL Function
1X Step2Step Pulse X-Axis
2Y Enable8Stepper Enable
3Y Direction6Direction Y-Axis
4Z Direction7Direction Z-Axis
5Z Step4Step Pulse Z-Axis
6Z Enable8Stepper Enable
7X Direction5Direction X-Axis
8Y Step3Step Pulse Y-Axis
9Spindle Motor12Spindle Enable
14X Enable8Stepper Enable
25GNDGNDGND

This works but these blue TB6560 boards are absolute junk and have numerous well documented design flaws (e.g. skipping steps) which require DIY modifications to fix, so if you are considering buying one… don’t. There are plenty of better options available!

5 thoughts on “TB6560 Stepper Motor Driver versus GRBL”

  1. hi,
    Nice article. Are you using 6560V2 ? what are better alternatives if this is not good option. A friend just bought a 6560 V2 and he says it works like charm no skipping steps and smooth motor operation. Need your feedback.

    1. Hi Emaad
      I don’t think mine is the 6560V2 (the board is the blue PCB pictured in the article). Sorry I can’t advise on other options, as my only experience is with the old 6560 board.
      Best regards
      James

  2. Thanks for the information, it served as a reference to configure my arduino nano, just look for the manual of my TB6560 board and I base it on your list, I already have my CNC machine for PCB operated using windows 10.

    greetings from Mexico

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