Stepper motor is twitching

[fredda]

Hi! I'm a beginner and I'm trying to see if my stepper motor works properly.

I'm trying to make my stepper motor 17HE08-1004s from stepperonline rotate clockwise 360 degrees every second, but instead it twitches and rotates randomly in both directions. I use the A4988 driver from AZ-delivery and an Arduino Uno. Below I will list all the values I currently have:

• Motor power supply: 20V
• Logic power supply: 5V (from Arduino)
• Vref: 1.17V (can't seem to increase it more than this on the driver)

Which of these values do you think is the problem and why?

here is my very simple code:

const int stepPin = 3;
const int dirPin = 4;

void setup() {
  pinMode(3, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(4, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
  // Set direction to HIGH (e.g., clockwise)
  digitalWrite(dirPin, HIGH);

  // Rotate 360 degrees (200 steps)
  for(int x = 0; x < 200; x++) {
    digitalWrite(stepPin, HIGH);        // Step motor
    delayMicroseconds(500);             // Wait for 500 microseconds
    digitalWrite(stepPin, LOW);         // Turn off step
    delayMicroseconds(500);             // Wait for 500 microseconds
  }

  // Wait for 10 seconds after completing 360-degree rotation
  delay(1000); // 10000 milliseconds = 10 seconds
}

[Paul_KD7HB]

@fredda

 for(int x = 0; x < 200; x++) {
    digitalWrite(stepPin, HIGH);        // Step motor
    delayMicroseconds(500);             // Wait for 500 microseconds
    digitalWrite(stepPin, LOW);         // Turn off step
    delayMicroseconds(500);             // Wait for 500 microseconds
  }

You are expecting the stepper motor to make a step every 500 microseconds. Is that reasonable?

[jremington]

@fredda

Vref: 1.17V

You need to know the value of the current sense resistor on the A4988 driver board, in order to set the current limit correctly.

And, as pointed out, you are setting the step rate to a ridiculously high value. Start with delay(500) instead.

[xfpd]

@fredda

Which of these values do you think is the problem and why?

Straight out of the lab workbook.

[filebi3588]

Hello,
I’m also new to stepper motors and had a similar problem. Could the twitching be because of the microstepping settings or maybe some noise in the wires?

[TomGeorge]

Hi, @fredda
Welcome to the forum.

Thanks for using code tags.

Can you please post a copy of your circuit, a picture of a hand drawn circuit in jpg, png?
Hand drawn and photographed is perfectly acceptable.
Please include ALL hardware, power supplies, component names and pin labels.

Can you please post a link to data/specs of your stepper motor?
What are you using for a power supply for the motor?

Thanks... Tom..

[Paul_KD7HB]

Hmmmm. Identical code problems from two different posters, all in the same week. I suspect they neglected to tell the AI code generator how many steps per second the motor was to take.