Author Topic: stepper motor drivers  (Read 13734 times)

Offline Gerhard Olivier

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 314
stepper motor drivers
« on: January 13, 2009, 06:33:23 AM »
Hi just to say hi.  New to this site.

Wondering how dificult it would be to make a hand controll for a stepper motor, One switch for direction and a wheel for speed.

I'm thinking to make a power feed for a small milling machine and stepper motors are relativly cheap.??

Is this even possible????

As you can tell my electronics know-how can be summed by ZIP
Thanks
Gerhard
Guernsey
Channel Islands

Offline sbwhart

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3530
  • Country: gb
  • Smile, Be Happy, Have Fun and Rock Until you Drop
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2009, 07:18:04 AM »
Hi Gareth

I'm looking at doing a symilar mod myselve some time in the future. I got some information from another chap who has complete a modification to a small mill using windscreen wiper motors, if you email me I'll forward it to you. You can pick my email up from member details


Cheers
 :wave:
Stew


« Last Edit: January 13, 2009, 08:09:16 AM by Darren »
A little bit of clearance never got in the road
 :wave:

Location:- Crewe Cheshire

bogstandard

  • Guest
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #2 on: January 13, 2009, 07:45:34 AM »
Gerhard & Stew,

Peter (HS93), has been thru all that learning curve and has produced (or had produced) a wonderful manual control box for steppers that will be used on his CNC mill project.

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=486

I should think it would revolve around how big the mill was, and as such the power required to move the axis, as to whether you can get the steppers cheaply enough.

Bogs

Offline Darren

  • Madmodder Committee
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3795
  • N/Wales
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #3 on: January 13, 2009, 08:11:44 AM »
Stew, sorry mate I modded your post by mistake, pressed the wrong button... :bow:

I seem to be all thumbs these days....!!!

I wanted to reply with something like can you share on here rather than email details privately?

Pleaaase..... :)

You will find it a distinct help… if you know and look as if you know what you are doing. (IRS training manual)

Offline sbwhart

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3530
  • Country: gb
  • Smile, Be Happy, Have Fun and Rock Until you Drop
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #4 on: January 13, 2009, 09:03:06 AM »
Thanks John

I see Peter's at Liverpool so not too far away.

Cheers

Stew
A little bit of clearance never got in the road
 :wave:

Location:- Crewe Cheshire

Offline sbwhart

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3530
  • Country: gb
  • Smile, Be Happy, Have Fun and Rock Until you Drop
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #5 on: January 13, 2009, 09:06:32 AM »
Stew, sorry mate I modded your post by mistake, pressed the wrong button... :bow:

I seem to be all thumbs these days....!!!

I wanted to reply with something like can you share on here rather than email details privately?

Pleaaase..... :)



Hi Darren

I was being carfull about putting a third parties email details on the forum without his permision, I've got his information at home so I'll add it in a couple of days as I'm working away at the moment.

Cheers
 :wave:
Stew
A little bit of clearance never got in the road
 :wave:

Location:- Crewe Cheshire

Offline Bernd

  • Madmodder Committee
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3688
  • Country: us
  • 1915 C Cab
    • Kingstone Model Works
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #6 on: January 13, 2009, 09:55:40 AM »
Hi Gerhard,

Welcome to the forum. I'm sure your going to like it here. A bunch of freindly and deversified people here willing to help as you can see from the responds you've gotten.

Start a post in the "Introductions" area and tell us a little about your interests and what part of the world your in.

I'm going to take a wild guess here. I believe your in Germany?  :)

Regards,
Bernd
Route of the Black Diamonds

Offline Brass_Machine

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5504
  • Country: us
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #7 on: January 13, 2009, 10:10:16 AM »
Hi Gerhard,

Welcome to the forum. I'm sure your going to like it here. A bunch of freindly and deversified people here willing to help as you can see from the responds you've gotten.

Start a post in the "Introductions" area and tell us a little about your interests and what part of the world your in.

I'm going to take a wild guess here. I believe your in Germany?  :)

Regards,
Bernd

Welcome Gerhard!

Please post up in the introductions. Bernd, I am gonna say he is the U.K.

Eric
Science is fun.

We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.

Offline Darren

  • Madmodder Committee
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3795
  • N/Wales
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #8 on: January 13, 2009, 12:44:19 PM »
Hi Darren

I was being carfull about putting a third parties email details on the forum without his permision,
Cheers
 :wave:
Stew
[/quote]

I see, yes quite right, best not put any emails on a forum or the  :borg: will play havoc with it....
You will find it a distinct help… if you know and look as if you know what you are doing. (IRS training manual)

Offline sbwhart

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3530
  • Country: gb
  • Smile, Be Happy, Have Fun and Rock Until you Drop
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #9 on: January 13, 2009, 01:24:37 PM »
Hi Darren

Made a bit of hash of this. I'll email the chap who did the mod and ask him if he's interested in joining the forum and posting the mod himselve, more the merrier  :beer: :beer:

Have
 :wave: :(
fun

Stew
A little bit of clearance never got in the road
 :wave:

Location:- Crewe Cheshire

Offline PTsideshow

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2570
  • Country: us
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #10 on: January 21, 2009, 09:04:26 AM »
Not exactly what you where asking but here are some sites with stepper motor info!
Stepper Motor Interface
http://www.geocities.com/nozomsite/stepper.html
All about motion control by viewing Galil's informative on-line tutorials.
http://www.galilinmotion.com/tutorials.php
Stepper motor applications - drivers
http://www.educypedia.be/electronics/motorstepdriver.htm
UNIPOLAR and BIPOLAR Stepper Motor Drivers (74194)
http://home.cogeco.ca/~rpaisley4/Stepper.html
More stuff
http://pminmo.com/
PICStep Microstepping Controller
http://www.fromorbit.com/projects/picstep/index.php

These are good for most applications and the kinds you can find, remove or pick up places!
 :dremel:
"The internet just a figment, of my imagination!' 
 
 There are only 3 things I can't do!"
Raise the Dead!
        Walk on water!
                 Fix a broken heart!
and I'm working on the first two!
glen

Offline Gerhard Olivier

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 314
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #11 on: January 21, 2009, 03:22:57 PM »
http://www.quasarelectronics.com/3094-rotary-unipolar-stepper-motor-driver.htm

This is what I think i want.  If it is what i think it is.  Thats to say it may be something else entirely!!!!!!

My thinking in this is if I use a stepper motor the motor and mount can stay if this later becomes a cnc conversion. If I use a wiper motor or such it needs to be comepletely redone.  :scratch:

If it is what I think it is and is what i want, I can't have it as they stopped making the bits for it?????Here's hoping that someone that understands these things reads this.

Gerhard.
Guernsey
Channel Islands

Offline Jadecy

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 20
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #12 on: January 23, 2009, 12:48:36 PM »
My suggestion would be to buy a ready to go stepper driver unit like the Gecho G540 and just drive the channels with a few electronics to give manual control. Let me explain a little. The G540 coupled with a good power supply for the motors gives you all the electronics to drive steppers from a parallel port. The parallel port pins on the G540 can be driven directly with TTL logic voltages of +5 and ground. No need for a computer at all.

The driver panel I would suggest would contain a 555 timer (ubiquitous 8 pin integrated circuit) which is easily configureable to be a square wave oscillator to provide the pulses to the controller. The frequency can be controlled by a potentiometer to adjust speed of the stepper motor. Use a nand logic gate (cheap integrated circuit) to isolate 2 push buttons from the circuit. One push button for direction, the other coupled with the oscillator to make the motor go. Use a 7805 ic (+5 volt regulator) to provide the voltage. You could use a 9v battery to power the whole thing. The controller board has a ground pin in the parallel port connector that you need to make common with the ground on the contrtoller board.


I will try to draw the basic circuit up and post it.
« Last Edit: January 23, 2009, 12:51:34 PM by Jadecy »

Offline Jadecy

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 20
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #13 on: January 23, 2009, 05:15:22 PM »
Here is the circuit I was trying to describe. The 555 acts as the pulse generator and the "move" switch controls whether those pulses make it to the controller or not. You may not need the switch debounce circuit but it can't hurt. Just duplicate the highlighted part of the circuit to control more motors:


Offline Gerhard Olivier

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 314
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #14 on: January 24, 2009, 12:41:34 PM »
Thanks

Here goes - if gecko g540 controlls 4 motors would g250 be ok to just controll 1 axis ( keep cost down)

The controller circuit for just 1 motor is same just drop 1 highlighted block??? or an i misunderstanding?#
And then most important how difficult and expensive to make up that PCB given NO, NONE, ZIP experience with electronics??

Thanks this looks promising.

gerhard


Guernsey
Channel Islands

Offline Jadecy

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 20
Re: stepper motor drivers
« Reply #15 on: January 24, 2009, 10:29:29 PM »
A single G250 for a single axis will work fine. Remember that you will still need a power the supply. The driver board contains the power transistor and driver circuit but does not supply the power to run the stepper motor. The G250 will drive NEMA-17, most NEMA-23 stepper motors according to the documentation on the Gecko driver site. You can just eliminate one highlighted section of the circuit if you just want to control one motor. For the initial build I would suggest getting a breadboard (temporary solderless circuit prototyping board). What a breadboard is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadboard

If you have never done electronics before you may want to get a little project kit that will help you build a few projects to get used to schematics and some basics. I'm not sure what is available where you are but here we have these:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102913

It has a breadboard plus some neat projects to get you headed in the right direction. The preadboard can be used for the circuit I posted. You would just need to purchase a couple extra parts.

Hope this helps!