Epson Printer Motors

tigershark35

Hi. I am hacking (tearing apart) several Epson pinters. Anyone know any voltage specs for these motors. I want to use them with a microprocessor on some small robotics projects.

Thanks.

allanlane5

I believe they are "stepper" motors, for the most part. Getting specs on them could be a problem.

Sadly, the more robotics I do, the less I find the "MacGuyver" approach working. Tearing something down (and keeping it in storage until you CAN tear it down) and applying the parts creatively seems to take more time and money than just buying the right part at the right time. Not to mention the comprimises you have to make in order to use the 'salvaged' item at all.

Plus, to do most electronics reliably it's critically important to get the manuals on ALL parts to know what they do, and what interface signals they require. Many internal parts for things like Printers are specified ONCE by the vendor, then MILLIONS of those devices made just for that purpose. So these parts are NOT 'off-the-shelf', and the vendor has an incentive NOT to publish the specifications.

Bottom line -- don't waste your time tearing apart printers. Find something else to do with that time, and buy a couple of $12 servo-motors and get on with your project.

RobotWorkshop

I think it is great that you are trying to salvage parts to reuse from an old printer! They can be a great source of parts and it keeps perfectly good parts out of the landfills. I've been able to recycle quite a few parts from printers myself. These are great to experiment on, build one off projects, and prototypes. If you are going to build a something to be resold or developed then you'll want to focus on more standard parts which you can readily order instead of just salvaged parts which are hit and miss in regards to availability.

There are plenty of resources online that talk about stepper motors and help determine which ones you may have. Also, if you examine the controller board you can get an idea of what the original driver circuits looked like. It can often provide clues how it was driven. If you have a working example you might be able to take some voltage readings to see what is there. Below are some links you may find useful. For more just use your favorite Internet Search engine. Have Fun!

http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/step/types.html

http://www.eio.com/jasstep.htm

http://www.st.com/stonline/books/pdf/docs/1679.pdf

http://www.freescale.com/files/microcontrollers/doc/app_note/AN2974.pdf

http://www.imagesco.com/articles/picstepper/02.html

Graham Stabler

They run the steppers at about 36v but with chopper drives which limit the current, I'm not sure how much current but in general as long as they are not hot enough to burn you steppers can run hot so you can determine the current limit experimentally. They work great at lower volts too but you get a reduced torque at higher speeds. I've used them for some experiments where I needed two high speed linear actuators, I bought two of the cheapest printers and it was still cheaper than any industrial solution. They tend to have DC motors on the side to side axis now and on better models they have servos on the paper feed two. FWIW epsons have nice digital quadrature encoders where as HP use analogue ones though you can turn them digital with a comparator easily enough.

Oh the steppers are bipolar 4 wire so that's just two coils, find the connections with a multimeter.

So I think printers are worth stripping but only for the stepper, belt drive, encoders and in some cases the nice rubber rollers.

Graham

p.s not normally on this forum so PM me if you need more info.

Superworms

sweet, i was actully going to see if someone i know will let me tear down their old printer

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Ariel

nice! my dad's epson stylus 1000 printer stopped working last week... now you know the future of the printer... jeje