Free stepper motor driver

The rotation of the motor requires the magnetic field to make a single step. The time required to make the coil fully magnetic depends on the induction of the coil. Internally to control the stepper motor we will have to use the green and black pair. The second pair will be of red and blue. LD IC is known as a motor driver. It is a low voltage operating device like other ICs. LD provides the continuous bidirectional Direct Current to the Motor.

The Polarity of current can change at any time without affecting the whole IC or any other device in the circuit. LD has an internal H-bridge installed for two motors. H-Bridge is an electrical circuit that enables the load in a bidirectional way.

LD bridge is controlled by external low voltage signals. It may be small in size, but its power output capacity is higher than our expectation. It could control any DC motor speed and direction with a voltage range of 4. The LD IC features both speed and direction control pins to control two motors simultaneously. Through these input pins we can determine whether to move the dc motor forward or backwards. The table below shows the logic signals required for the appropriate spinning action for motor A.

Motor B is also controlled in a similar way. EN1,2 controls the speed of one motor and EN3,4 controls the speed of the other motor. Through the PWM functionality, we can also control the speed of the motor.

For which ever stepper motor you are using refer to its datasheet to find the correct coloured wires to differentiate the coil1, coil2, coil3 and coil4 wires. Connect 5V from Arduino with pin8 and pin These will power up both the motor and the driver IC. This will ensure that the stepper motor stays enabled. Connect all the common grounds together. Connect 5V from Arduino with pin8.

This will power up the driver IC. Connect positive terminal of 12V power supply with pin8 and negative terminal with common ground. A new file will open. Copy the code given below in that file and save it. Firstly, we will include the Stepper. This library provides useful functions that make it easy to control the stepper motor. The next step is to define the steps per revolution. This is the number of steps our motor requires to move one complete revolution. If using NEMA 17 set the value to If using 28BYJ instead set the value to Next, we will define the input pins of the motor connections with the Arduino board.

However, you can use any other suitable Arduino digital pins as well. Now we will create an instance of the Stepper library called motor and pass the steps per revolution and the individual motor input pins as arguments.

Make sure you specify the input pins in their correct sequence. So I take the soldering iron and touch it on the excess copper and peal it up off the board. It makes the board more like what you would get if you chemical etched it or bought it from a board house see below. Any way look over the schematic and place the parts accordingly. I added a few capacitors along the power lines just for general principals.

There were so few traces on the top side of the board I didn't bother milling it. I just used jumper wires. See the pictures below of the populated board.

All the little FETs ligned up like marching soldiers. OK, For all you chemistry majors who want to do something a little more professional here are some. If you want to go easy Just do the Bottom Copper.

There's not that much on the top and you can just solder jumpers where you need to. Don't be nervus. It's just a little electricity. First off it would be good to load up the KCAM or what ever you plan on using in your computor. Then when you feel comfortable that all the parts are in the right place plug the parallel port connector into the driver board as shown below and put a low wattage build in the socket for the motor.

In this case I'm using middle, the Y axis driver. For power I like to use one if these universal power adapters with selectable voltage output. They're cheap and they don't put out a lot of current so if something goes wrong it's less likely to damage your circuit.

Set the voltage low and see if you have some vlotage on the power pins 16 of the CD and the CD Now you can use this as a probe to see where you have voltage. It will be very dim but we don't want to draw too much current away from the circuit. Now go into the computer program and find the Setup Table. Set the steps per inch to Then open the CNC control and set the single step for. Now each time you click the yellow arrows up and down for the Y axis the computor will output one pulse to the stepper motor driver circuit.

This is the up down input. When you click the up arrow the input will be low LED off and when you click the down arrow the input will be high LED on. Pin 15 is the step input you will see a very short blink each time you click a n up or down arrow on this pin. Pin 6 is the Q1 output. And Pin 11 is the Q2 output. It will change state every other time you click an arrow. On the output side of things we should see some activity on the CD chip.

Putting your probe on any of the output pins 1,4,6,or 7. These outputs drive the FETs. You should see the output go high every 4th time you click the up or down arrow. If this all makes sense so far it's time to get the motor running. The common wire or wires of the motor which are the center tap of the windings should be connected to the light bulb. The other four wires should go to the four FETs on the circuit. If you are really lucky you will get the combination just right in the first couple of trys.

Other wise just keep switching the wires arround until the motor steps in the same direction each time you click the arrows. Watch the video in the next step. It may give you a better idea what to do. I'm not a Linux user yet but I have played with it enough to be dangerous. But for you Linux users Chaddcurtis has contributed some setup files and information to help you use Linux CNC with the parallel port and this circuit board layout.

Thanks a lot Chad and more power to you. Question 11 months ago on Step 3. Answer 14 days ago. Thank you very much for this wonderful work I was looking for so much so I found you but my problem is that my electronic information is not good, that I can install the pieces but I can not detect the notes or errors.

If there are any comments or modification on this circuit I hope you help me so I do not start I am thankful to you again and I wish from all the brothers who participated and who have participated in this experience and have experience in it if they can help me please and thank you all. I built using PDF files from your instructable.

Attached a sketch with markups. Thanks in advance. Reply 4 years ago. Thank you. Reply 8 years ago on Introduction. Regards, Dirk. Reply 5 years ago. Hi, please advise I made one axis driver and one stepper motor and test it on a test board I will build the 3-axis board with three stepper motors soon and i will post images after testing it. I've cheated a bit in making my CNC Engraver. That part of the work was super easy to complete.