Help with salvaged Hard Drive spindle and Motor shield

Using Arduino Motors, Mechanics, Power and CNC
1

My Arduino and motor shield arrived today, spent the day soldering the motor sheild. I say day it didn't take long at all. I pulled apart an old hard drive for the spindle motor. I thought it would be DC but I think its a stepper, it has 4 wires and reacts randomly to the Adfruit stepper program on the tutorial and only makes a whining noise on the DC motor couplings. Heres a picture I hope helps:

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I ordered an actual stepper motor but would be cool to get this one going for fun, I like the recycling aspect of it.

TIA!

2

I thought I didn't have enough power but perhaps to much. With just the USB and the jumper pin in it spins quite nicely at 100 rpm. Anything more an it goes jibbery. But its against all the stuff I've read, don't use a battery or USB as it won't be powerful enough.

3

That is a brushless dc motor and not a stepper.

4

You need to work out which of the four wires is the common one and use a 3-phase drive on the other 3.

5

Thanks for that, if I find it, will the motor shield be able to run this type of DC motor?

6

The documentation for the shield should say what it's capable of...

7

If you don't know, theres no shame in saying so.

The documentation didn't mention anything regarding such DC motors. But my 4 phase stepper arrived today and thats hooked up now and working fine so no worries about the other one. Thanks thou for the info, sure it will come in handy again.

8

If there was a link to that motor shield I'd have looked it up... It was a long shot anyway, cheap 3-phase motor controllers are not the norm still (outside of RC model world).

9

Yeah googled it a lot and RC motors did pop up a lot. Now I've got past the electrical side and into programming which is my strong suite I'm totally in love with the arduino. Its exactly what I wanted.