Power for Stepper motor?

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi all.

I'm trying to make myself a large pizza dough roller for work.

I'll be fun turning the rolling pins, but I've got myself a stepper motor I wanted to control one of the two pins with, and I was going to control the speed with a potentiometer. I was planning on using an arduino pro mini 5, and hoping to use a darlington array to control the stepper itself.

It's power supplies I'm confused with.

The arduino itself won't output enough juice to power the stepper enough to push the dough through, so I need the darlington array.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/221233908096?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

That's my stepper, but it's 3.6V and 2A to control it.

I was hoping to only use one plug going into it, so if I have a 9v, 2A wall wort going to the arduino, can I tap into that power source to power the stepper? I didn't want to have two plugs. And what's the best way to scale down the voltage for the stepper?

Or am I over thinking things?

Thanks.

2

If you use a suitable driver board for the motor you won't need to step down the voltage, you might find you would even get better results with a higher voltage.

Look at these Pololu - A4988 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier. They probably don't control enough current for your motor, but will give you the idea.

The motor board allows you to specify the maximum current so you don't damage the motor and then hig voltage allows it to reach that current quickly.

However I suspect anything to do with Pizza dough would require a lot of power - is a stepper motor suitable?

...R