Stepper first steps (pun intended)

Ugha

I'm just starting to toy with stepper motors and I'd like some advice.

I just ripped apart an old printer and was very excited to see it contained not one, but two nice,
low-profile (perfect for my application) stepper motors.

There are, however, two problems.

The only stepper with a label says 66.5 27.6V

My first question is... is the rated voltage the min or max? Can it be ran off a much lower voltage
(say 5-9volt).

My second question is...
I ran the traces on the printer's circuit board til I found the stepper driver chip. It's a surface mount
chip but I think I could desolder it fairly easily. The question though, is it worth it?

Would it be easier to try and get the stepper working with the driver chip or would it be easier to
simply use a Basic stamp and a couple H-bridges?

I managed to find the datasheet for the driver chip, but I can't make heads or tails of it.

I'd appreciate it if one of you guys who actually know what your doing (IE: Not me) would give me
some advice.

Ugha

I've answered my own question about the voltage... The motor requires 24 volts min (I found the datasheet).

I'd still like to know if the stepper driver is worth salvaging though.

kwinn

My advice would be not to waste time trying to unsolder and then find the specs for the driver chip in order to use it.

SRLM

Look on the Stepper motor product page. It lists a stepper motor driver that can work with any stepper motor (or, at least 4 and 5 wire). There is also a N&V article "Stepping out with Spin" that discusses both the BS2 and SPIN versions of the code.

Bean

If the stepper is unipolar (5 or 6 wire) then I would recommend the Little Step-U controller. I've used it in a project and it's very easy to use. You send it serial data to move the motor and the "Little Step-U" takes care of all the ramping and timing.

http://www.parallax.com/Store/Microcontrollers/BASICStampModules/tabid/134/txtSearch/stepper/List/1/ProductID/68/Default.aspx?SortField=ProductName%2cProductName

Bean.

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