8 wires stepper motor, how to make it run?

Other Hardware Motors, Mechanics, Power and CNC
1

Hello freaks!

I have read all available articles in the internet now concerning how to connect my motor, but I cannot figure out how to make it run together with my Arduino board.

I have an Arduino Pro and this motor shield. Now I have hooked up some stepper motors fine with the shield, but now I got a motor with 8 instead of 4 cables. Now I already know this seems to be a bifilar motor and one can connect 2 coils in series, but I don´t know how to do that...

The motor has 8 wires with four "color pairs" (see picture A):

  1. black / (black&white) striped
  2. red / (red&white)
  3. green / (green&white)
  4. yellow / (yellow&white)

When measuring the wires, the resistance between the colored pairs is 20 ohm, there is no resistance between wires of different colors. Of course it is obvious, that the colored pairs of wires each represent one coil, but just to be sure I proofed my guess by measuring.

Okay, so here I have four coils and I identified their appropriate wires. Now as far as I understood, I should connect 2 coils in series. I guess this means what is shown in the here attached picture B? If so, I get a "6 wired motor" out of my "8 wired" one. Right?

Now first thing I am unsure about is:

1.: Which colors should be paired to series?
2.: How do I connect my "degraded" 6-wire-motor to the motor shield? As you can see, she shield has two "ports" with 5 screws each for connecting motors. Until today I only used 4 of one port for my step motor.

Thanks a lot for your help! Martin...

Bifilar Motor Wiring.jpg
Bifilar Motor Wiring.jpg845×392 53.2 KB

2

Okay, so I can try out? But how? How do I connect 6 wires to the motorshield now?

Thanks a lot! MArtin...

3

There are a number of ways to wire an 8 lead motor. This link does a good job of explaining:http://pminmo.com/PMinMOwiki/index.php5?title=8wiremotors.
If you would like more detailed information on all aspects of stepper motors check this out: Jones on Stepping Motors.

4

You fellow girls and guys out there, it is time once again to say thank you so much and to depict how much I appreciate your help and this great forum!

After having found a comparable motor at nanotec and comparing their wiring and colors to the circuits user "Yankee" posted here, I soldered the 8 wires together as a "8 lead bipolar parrallel connection". No more trying after having found the diagrams - thanks to you and the forum -, the motor runs very smoothly now...

Thank you so much!