Hardware Peripheral Input/Output

Stepper Motor Driver Power Supplies

The current required to drive a stepper motor depends on the motor, motor wiring, the driver, and the drive mode. To be safe, supply twice the motors rated current.

Motor Rating: Manufacturers can rate their motors under different systems. Most of the old round unipolar motors you pull out of old equipment have label ratings for 2 phases on. So 1.5A means both phases always running at 1.5A. But newer motors (like most square ones) are rated per phase, so 1.5A means 1.5 amps maximum with one coil running.

Driver Type and Wiring: The type of driver and how it is connected to the motor can also affect the required drive current. A bipolar driver in series mode needs 0.707 * rated current (1.414 * rated voltage) but in parallel mode needs 1.414 * rated current. Unipolar drivers typically drive the rated current. See: Stepper Motor Connection Options for more on this. On top of that, the drive electronics can require slightly more or less depending on the type of current regulation. A chopper drive can require slightly less than full current on average while a linear driver will need up to 1.5 times the full standard rated current.

Drive Mode: Even within one driver, the mode can change drive current requirements. In full step mode, if both coils are on all the time, the current draw is doubled. In microstepping modes, the current draw is typically about 1.4 times the rated current. But there are exceptions and each driver may be a bit different. For example, the Linisteppers full torque half stepping mode will use between 1 and 1.5 times the rated per phase current depending on which step in the sequence the motor is on, but it will provide more torque from the same motor!

Taking the Linistepper as an example of a non-chopper type, microstepping, linear driver (but one with /active/ current regulation): The average current when running in microstep mode is 126% of the single phase current. For any particular microstep the minimum is 100% and the maximum is 155%. In FULL step mode the current will be 200% at all times. The half-stepping mode the LiniStepper uses is 140% average current. Double the current using full step mode, but 140% is the best generalisation for half stepping and microstepping modes.

Power Supplies +

See also:

• http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1170784 Converting hot swap PC power supplies into bench supplies.+
• http://web2.murraystate.edu/andy.batts/ps/powersupply.htm Converting a standard ATX PC power supply into a bench supply
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Protecting against short circuits +

Questions:

• SPAMxheight at live.com asks:

  Linistepper with regulated powersupply - gets pulse for movement.
  
  Hello! With my Plotter project i lately wanted to save some time and bought AC 240V to DC 5V Voltage Converter that is meant for LED lights. It is a switching power supply. Only flaw is that when i hooked all things up, motor started to erratically turn without any inpulse on "step" pin if i connect with regular "wall-wart" weaker(2A) PSU all works normally.
  What can i do to fix this problem? Seems like that particular PSU creates spikes that linistepper counts as step impulses? can it be this way?

  James Newton of MassMind replies: Yes, a power supply that isn't smooth can certainly cause this sort of problem.+

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