I have a surplus motor, a big one, with a gearbox on it apparently. It has 5 wires, and says "5-Phase stepping motor", ".0072 deg/step" and "1.2ohms/phase".
How can I figure out which wire is which by measuring with an ohmmeter? How can I drive it? All the easy stepper driver boards on sparkfun and so on are for 4, 6, and 8-wire steppers. Is it possible to run a stepper without hooking up every phase, if you just want it to work and don't need much torque?
Here is where you can find the step sequence you'll need to drive this motor: Jones on Stepping Motor Types.
Your biggest problem will be to find a suitable driver for this motor. I would look on ebay for one. I believe Vexta made some.
Thanks. I can't believe I would need 10 transistors to use this stepper motor. I guess it's not very useful after all.
You might try posting over at CNCzone (http://www.cnczone.com/forums/index.php). There may be someone there who can help.
Unless you can find a used 5 phase driver I suspect it would be easier and less expensive just to buy a new bipolar motor.
By the way, what are you planning to do with this motor?