I'm just playing with a stepper motor, it's only a little one, 1.7A. I've got a driver board with an L298N on it. I struggled to find any wiring instructions so I've 'had a go' and it seems to work. Type in a number of steps and it moves the right amount so I think it is wired right. Could it be wrong but still work? It is getting rather hot when in use. It has a pretty big heat-sink so I suppose they are expecting it to get hot. Does this sound normal?
I'm trying to make a camera slider using arduino, I have the same L298N motor driver but a different motor (don't find any info about it online) , the code of the motor is STP-42D138 1.8 DEG/step 5.2 Ohm.
I made a video (sorry for the bunch of wires around, last night when I started to play with the motor driver I couldn't find the breadboard)
so you can see more details about the parts used.
I installed a DHT22 temp senzor near L298N chip and the reading after 1 minute was 43C , I belive it was more because I couldn't keep my hand on the heatsink for more than 2 seconds. The motor was also more than warm.
For my project (timelapse on the slider) should I look for different motor/driver ? Probably the driver and motor will be on for 1 hour .. maybe more
Nickjb, did you changed the driver with a different one ? much powerfull ?
Thank you mark for your reply, I installed a 12v @ 35mm diameter fan over the driver and the temperature didn't raised over 35 degree , I belive it's ok, but now after I let the motor turn 500 steps at 1 step/ second and another 1500 steps at a higher rate (I have played with the pot and changed the delay from 0 to 1023) the motor reached the temperature of 75 degrees C and rising, the DHT22 sensor was under the motor.
Is this normal ? A stepper motor is getting that hot while operating ? Or there is an issue in my wirings.
Now I'm changing my code to support 2 temperature sensors, one on the driver and one on the motor so I can monitor everything at least while I'm building it.
Yes, if you run them at full current continuously they get hot. If you reduce the current when not
moving to about 50% that may make quite a difference (this is commonly done).
Lowering the current it's a good idea also for conserving the battery (I will use a LIPO), but I think for my project will be better to have a switch on the slider controller to activate or deactivate the "ECO mode". When the slider will be at an angle, and not perfectly horizontally I think I will need the torque to keep the DSLR camera into position.
Because I don't want to hijack nickjb thread about L298N motor driver getting hot, and because this problem was solved in my case by adding a small fan over the driver, I created a new thread asking for advices on how to lower the temperature of stepper motor
Your problem probably isn't L298N. It's the enable pin.
You MUST enable L298N while you are using the motor and disable it immediately when you stop, otherwise, you are just getting a short circuit within the stepper motor and everything gets super hot.