Abstract: To address the insufficient torque and drive power of a single stepper motor, an innovative design method for coaxial connection and drive of two stepper motors is proposed and successfully applied. This related technology has been granted a Chinese national patent. This paper provides hardware and software design examples for control using an MCS-51 microcontroller.
Keywords: microcontroller; stepper motor; driver; IC; cascaded parallel connection
0 Introduction
Stepper motors are widely used in robots, robotic arms, printers, and smart instruments. In some applications, a single stepper motor cannot meet the torque requirements of the actuator, and a single-chip power driver IC (integrated circuit) cannot provide the drive power needed for high torque. Innovative technology for coaxial connection and drive devices of dual stepper motors successfully solves these problems.
1. Stepper Motor and Control Drive Principle
Stepper motors differ from other control motors in that they are controlled by input pulse signals. The driving principle of a stepper motor is to make the motor rotate in steps by sequentially switching the current in each phase coil. Each time a regular pulse signal is input, the stepper motor rotates by a fixed angle. The total rotation angle is determined by the number of input pulses, and the speed of the stepper motor is determined by the frequency of the pulse signal.
Details: Design of coaxial connection and drive device for dual stepper motors
