I was wondering if any of you guys knows where to get some secon-hand stepper motors. What I'm aiming at is reusing stuff from things people throw away. I guess old floppy drives and printers are a great place to start. Has anyone got any other ideas?
Printers and scanners. Sometimes you can find very small stepper motors in old auto-focus cameras (or, worst case - it will be a small DC motor with a slot encoder - this isn't what you want, but could be useful for something else). Note that in all of these cases, you are unlikely to find any large steppers (you might find something larger in a photocopier); if you want a better source of such steppers, then online is the better option (ebay has people selling surplus steppers all over the place - the only problem then would be shipping).
Thank you. For starters I'll just need some kind of a stepper motor to do some excercise. I am planning a project but before I run I'll need to learn how to walk I guess :). I think I'll manage to get hold of some old printer or scanner.
The biggest problem with found steppers is that they tend to be Bipolar steppers. That means there are only 4 wires and you need an H-Bridge to drive them. Unipolar steppers have 5, 6 or 8 wires and are simpler to interface - you only need 4 transistors and 4 diodes(or 4 irf520 or similar FETs) and your Arduino.