Hello , I'm starting a new DIY project and I'm dealing with stepper motors for the first time, I want to build a camera slider that will be capable of moving also a DSLR camera.
I have a L298N motor driver which a few days ago, when I first powered it up, was overheating alot in a very short time (in 1 minute the DHT22 sensor mounted near the driver readed ~43 degrees C and rising, I than disconnected the battery) and a stepper motor STP-42D138 @ 1.8 deg/step 5.2Ohm (I dont find any technical specs about this motor online unfortunately).
Yesterday after a user of this forum advised me to use a fan on the driver, I solved the first problem, now with a 33mm fan over L298N the temperature never raised over 34 deg C.
Now I have another problem with my motor, it gets very hot, in about 10 - 15 minutes it reached 74 deg C (the DHT22 sensor was under the motor) after this point I disconnected the battery as the temperature was constantly rising.
I started this thread so I and other newbies can learn, with your guys help, how to lower the temperature of the stepper motors .
MarkT suggested to lower the curent (automatically the torque will be lower) when the motor is maintaining it's position, I found a library called StepperLab3 which it seems it supports curent limiting by setPower(), is there anything similar in the Stepper.h library ? or I should use that library instead ?
So far I only used #include <Stepper.h> library .
In my project I could use curent limiting only in some cases, when the slider will be perfectly horizontal, but when the slider will be positioned on an angle I will need the torque to keep the camera in the same position. I will use a switch so I will activate or deactivate the "ECO" mode when I need it.
So what do you guys suggest ?
Is 75 degrees C temperature to high for a stepper motor?
Thank you.