I have recently gifted an old CNC router; it hasn’t been used in many, many years…. I was planning on using an Arduino/RAMPS 1.4 if I can’t get some of the details figured out.
The three stepper motors have 10 wires but only 8 seem to be connected to another wire (see attached).
Enclosure
• A computer AC power cable is used to power the unit.
• Each of the wires are hooked to individual serial connectors that plug into a proprietary mainboard.
• A 25-pin parallel cable exits this enclosure and goes to the computer.
• I’ve ordered a 25-pin parallel cable to USB cable to see if I can detect the electronics in the enclosure. If it works, hopefully I can at least control it using pronterface
Stepper Motors
• I checked the resistance between all of the wires to find out the coils.
o There are two sets of readings for 8 sets of wires, one is 0.9, and two readings of 41.1.
• I then confirmed it by holding the wires together and manually turned the motor.
o The motor was easy to turn when the readings were 0.9.
o The motor was hard to turn when the readings were 41.1.
o I was able to light an LED between the wires where the resistance was 0.9.
If 25-pin parallel cable to USB cable doesn’t work, then my questions are:
Are these stepper motors AC or DC?
Is it possible to use the 10-wire stepper motors with an Arduino?
What kind of driver(s) would I need?
If I need to buy different stepper motors, what kind should I look at?
You have not given the name or manufacturer of the machine. You have not given the id or manufacturer of the motor. There also 5 phase stepper motors, such as used on my old CNC milling machine.
Paul
I tested the electronics within the enclosure and it and it does have a DC converter, which is at 24 volts.
Hopefully there is a way to use 10-wire steppers with an Arduino. I've searched google, but haven't seen any posts on it yet.
Paul_KD7HB:
You have not given the name or manufacturer of the machine. You have not given the id or manufacturer of the motor. There also 5 phase stepper motors, such as used on my old CNC milling machine.
Paul
The equipment is so old that any stickers or other markings are no longer on it,
Sorry, I can't make sense of your description of the resistance tests.
It might be a two phase stepper, with 41 Ohms/winding. Try it with a standard two phase stepper driver, using just the white/red and blue/gray wires as the two phases. Even an L298 brushed DC motor driver will work, if that is the case.
Your multimeter is reading 0.9 for shorted wires, partly wire and probe resistance,
ie for instance white and yellow are the same terminal.
The motor is effective bipolar, 4-wire plus shield, the 4 terminals are:
A+ white/yel
A- red/orange
B+ brown/blue
B- grey/green
[ I've arbitrarily assigned A,B and the polarity ]
The wires are doubled up for current handling perhaps? Sometimes connectors are used
with limited current handling so you double up the connector pins and wires to compensate.
BTW your grid of measured resistances seems to use 0 for X in the lower left quadrant -
that's not consistent but must be an oversight, not real measurents. The diagonal should
read all 0 of course!
Sorry for not responding earlier but I just realized (and fixed) my notification settings.
After reading the posts and suggestions I decided to look and see if all 10 wires were actually connected to the end of the serial cable. They were not; the purple and ground were not soldered in. Upon further investigation at the end of the cable, I noticed that there are two sets of wires that are soldered together. So it looks like it is only a 40-wire motor.
I found a test script and hooked up the motor wires. After a couple of tries, I found the correct sequence to move the motor!
