Friday, August 3, 2018

Operation of Stepper Motor Instruction

Stepper motors operate differently from DC brush motors, which rotate when voltage is applied to their terminals. Stepper motors, on the other hand, effectively have multiple toothed electromagnets arranged around a central gear-shaped piece of iron. The electromagnets are energized by an external control circuit, for example a microcontroller.



To make the motor shaft turn, first one electromagnet is given power, which makes the gear’s teeth magnetically attracted to the electromagnet’s teeth. The point when the gear’s teeth are thus aligned to the first electromagnet, they are slightly offset from the next electromagnet. So when the next electromagnet is turned ON and the first is turned OFF, the gear rotates slightly to align with the next one and from there the process is repeated.

Stepper Motor Control by Varying Clock Pulses
Stepper motor control circuit is a simple and low-cost circuit, mainly used in low power applications. The circuit is shown in figure, which consist 555 timers IC as stable multi-vibrator. The frequency is calculated by using below given relationship:

The common point of the winding is connected to +12V DC supply, which is also connected to pin 9 of ULN2003. The color code used for the windings is may vary form make to make. When the power is switched on, the control signal connected to SET pin of the first flip-flop and CLR pins of the other three flip-flops goes active ‘low’ (because of the power-on-reset circuit formed by R1-C1 combination) to set the first flip-flop and reset the remaining three flip-flops. On reset, Q1 of IC3 goes ‘high’ while all other Q outputs go ‘low’. External reset can be activated by pressing the reset switch. By pressing the reset switch, you can stop the stepper motor. The motor again starts rotating in the same direction by releasing the reset switch.

Now you have got an idea about the types of super motors and its applications if you have any queries on this topic or on the electrical and electronic projects leave the comments below.