If you’ve been reading Hack a Day for long enough, you know about our infatuation with stepper motors. These precious little devices put the oomph into our CNC routers, 3D printers, robots, and other ...

3D scanners aren’t cheap, and the last thing you want to see after purchasing one is bad data. But that’s what [Dave Does] and others were getting from their Revopoint POP scanners until some communal ...

Frequently, when it comes to step motor selection, users will select a motor with the highest holding torque rating, assuming that it will give them optimal performance. However, it is an improper ...

The world is digital today, and most information is represented in numbers. However, human nature is more “analog” and information is better represented in the old-fashioned way, using pointer gauges ...

Find a downloadable version of this story in pdf format at the end of the story. A new controller IC, the L6470 for stepper motors, integrates the power stage along with a digital control core on a ...

Step motors provide accurate position control without the need for feedback, traditionally in open-loop control schemes. A stepper motor’s shaft normally makes discrete angular movements of ...

Stepper motors resemble servo motors in that both types are characterized by an ability to rotate a partial turn and then stop for any interval with or without holding torque. In addition, both motor ...

Stepper motors are often used for positioning since they are cost-effective, easy to drive, and can be used in open-loop systems—meaning that they don’t require position feedback like servo motors.

When it’s time to specify a high-performance motor that offers both precise positioning and cost efficiency, stepper motors offer many advantages over DC motors thanks to their brushless technology.

Here's a simple algorithm that uses conventional microcontroller blocks to control commercially available H-bridges to properly commutate a bipolar stepper motor through a microstepping profile.