NEMA 23 Stepper Motor
SN96
Posts: 318
Can a basic stamp II controll a NEMA 23 Stepper motor? I·looked at·these stepper motors and some come with integrated drives and some you need to get the drives seperate. Can the basic stamp interface with these drives?
I have a new project in my mind that will involve two stepper motors (both NEMA 23) that will power a table that will move in the x and y axis. The only thing I need is how to go about learning how to hook up power to the steppers, and how to hook up the basic stamp to them as well.
Thanks
Mike
Post Edited By Moderator (Jon Williams (Parallax)) : 8/31/2005 2:48:06 AM GMT
I have a new project in my mind that will involve two stepper motors (both NEMA 23) that will power a table that will move in the x and y axis. The only thing I need is how to go about learning how to hook up power to the steppers, and how to hook up the basic stamp to them as well.
Thanks
Mike
Post Edited By Moderator (Jon Williams (Parallax)) : 8/31/2005 2:48:06 AM GMT
Comments
I made the mistake of buying a driver board that I had to supply voltage too to drive the motor.
Three things I learned
One, The stepper motors voltage rating is not the voltage you use it's I think double or triple (dont quote me it's been a while) however with that setup yopu need to control the current with big wattage resistors that suck up lots of power. I got the board from http://www.stepper3.com/ It uses the parallel port for communication so you could use pins on the stamp to control it instead I would think but I know timeing is very important.
I found out the best power to use is a chopper driver. It uses pulses of higher voltage to controll the current without big wattage resistors. There are very nice pre built drivers available that use ttl logic pins to communicate.
When you test your setup, remember a stepper motor needs to have a load on it to function or it will chatter at certain frequencies. I was testing one without a load and I could not get much speed out of it, and I did not have any 7 ohm 25 watt resistors to double or triple the voltage but I plan to revisit the table I built when I get a chance and try the resistors, as I just bought some when I ordered stuff from B.J. electronics.
Lots of good reading here http://cnczone.com/
Yep, my machine has 36V stepper motors but I run them with a 60VDC/50A power supply for the same reason. Once I unplug the power supply it takes about 15 seconds for capacitor to discharge so I can turn the motors by hand. These power supplies are very dangerous, so I'm building an enclosure for mine so the neighborhood kids who come by to check out the robots don't get hurt.
- Ken
P.S. to Mike - check out the Gecko stepper drives (G201). These might be ideal for what you want to do.