I just got a box of 22 stepper motors. I'd like to go thru and figure out which wire is which while I still know how. Then mark the info on the stepper motor. Is there a standard for labeling the wires?
The 5-wire one I've already marked I used: "Common", A, B, C, D
A is a wire picked at random. Applying a pulse to A and then to B makes it step clockwise. B then C another step clockwise. Then D. And back to A.
But I just saw another site that labeled
A - "positive" end of coil 1
B - "negative" end of coil 1
C - "positive" end of coil 2
D - "negative" end of coil 2
Is there a standard, or does everybody do it their own way?
No real standard as far as I know, the trouble is working out what ones are attached to what coil.....this can be done with checking the resistance between the wires.
Grumpy mike, you may want to check on the formatting of your website. I use firefox at home on 1280x1024 and it works fine but where I am at the moment I am using 1280x1024 with ie and it messes it all up, pictures are over the text. Just thought i'd say.
On the topic of steppers, anyone know where you can get steepers for cheap apart from old scanners. Do printers run steppers too?
Most places will sell steppers, these people are good especially for bigger ones:- http://www.motioncontrolproducts.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=4&products_id=6
OK on the web site, certain versions of IE can't cope with the code. A situation I am cool with as for years Microsoft gloried in the fact that only their browser could cope with all the HTML extensions that they invented. Boot and other foot.
I use Apples iWeb to make my site.
floppy disk drives, hard disks, CD/DVD drives too.
Hard drives do not contain steppers as far as I know. Floppy disk drives. CD/DVD drives don't normally do they, the one for the drive is a normal motor with sensors for open/closed. The one for the laser has sensors each end and a screw drive which is accurate enough to just use a controlled normal one (or is it a tiny stepper). I think it is the same in floppy drives.
I thought it was in printers, I suppose it has to be, like in scanners. I have an old printer that is in bits sitting in a box but I have not taken the motor out of the casing yet.
OK on the web site, certain versions of IE can't cope with the code. A situation I am cool with as for years Microsoft gloried in the fact that only their browser could cope with all the HTML extensions that they invented. Boot and other foot.
I use Apples iWeb to make my site.
No, CD drives and hard drives do not use steppers. I think floppy drives may have 1, however. Well, CD drives do have a type of stepper to move the sled back and forth, but it's not the common type you see.
Hard drives do not contain steppers as far as I know. Floppy disk drives. CD/DVD drives don't normally do they, the one for the drive is a normal motor with sensors for open/closed. The one for the laser has sensors each end and a screw drive which is accurate enough to just use a controlled normal one (or is it a tiny stepper). I think it is the same in floppy drives.
There are 100% definitely stepper motors used in 5 1/4" floppy disk drives.....I have about 5 on my desk right now. and Iv got steppers from old pre 386 computer hard drives.
The ones I had taken apart over the last few years are just a coil with a permanent magnet arm. It's sort of half a motor as it will not rotate but just go through an angle less than 90 degrees.
he ones I had taken apart over the last few years are just a coil with a permanent magnet arm. It's sort of half a motor as it will not rotate but just go through an angle less than 90 degrees.
That's what I thought, they can just be made to 'kick' backwards and forwards (can be a bit of fun if you have a lot of them!)
And im going to stick by my guns and say the Head Motor is a Stepper in a hard disk!
The original MFM, RLL and to a lesser extent, ESDI hard drives often used stepper motors to move the heads. This was discontinued as they weren't very accurate. I worked in an industrial operation where you could see this in action. In the winter time, if you left the servers shut down overnight, the platters would shrink and the servers would not boot. You had to leave them running for 15-20 minutes to warm the drives so the platters would expand and move the tracks under the heads. Hit the reset button and the system would now boot.
All modern drive technologies use voice coil head motors. These have a very powerful permanent magnet pair with a simple coil. Varying the current through the coil moves the heads. This is used with either a servo track on one platter surface for multi platter drives or inter sector information on single platter drives to provide feedback for proper track positioning and is vastly more accurate and faster at head positioning than stepper motors could ever be.
The platter drive motor is a constant speed brushless motor.
The original MFM, RLL and to a lesser extent, ESDI hard drives often used stepper motors to move the heads. This was discontinued as they weren't very accurate. I worked in an industrial operation where you could see this in action. In the winter time, if you left the servers shut down overnight, the platters would shrink and the servers would not boot. You had to leave them running for 15-20 minutes to warm the drives so the platters would expand and move the tracks under the heads. Hit the reset button and the system would now boot.
All modern drive technologies use voice coil head motors. These have a very powerful permanent magnet pair with a simple coil. Varying the current through the coil moves the heads. This is used with either a servo track on one platter surface for multi platter drives or inter sector information on single platter drives to provide feedback for proper track positioning and is vastly more accurate and faster at head positioning than stepper motors could ever be.
The platter drive motor is a constant speed brushless motor.
Ok, a nice bit of info there. You also just reminded me to get my stepper out of my old printer (which is already in bits)
