By Jeram Chamberlain of Nippon Pulse America JChamberlain@Nipponpulse.com http://www.nipponpulse.com/main.

html Have you ever picked up a motor and discovered it had a few more wires then you were expecting? It could have been a stepper motor. Stepper motors are very commonly used in a number of products you might use every day. You can find them in everything from wrist watches to printers, IV pumps to gas pumps, stepper motors are also FIGURE 1 popular in machine tools, process control systems, tape and disk drive systems, and programmable controllers. Most technicians while in school learned about motors, but as common as stepper motors are it is amazing, how few technicians know, or still reminder, how stepper motors work, and how to troubleshoot and test them. There is much confusion about the differences between Unipolar and Bipolar types of stepper motors. There is confusion about how Constant Current and Constant Voltage types of stepper motor drives work. Why do I use a 5V motor when I have a 24V supply? But dont feel bad. There are a number of engineers who do not understand either. This is a 2 part series were we will cover the most important steps of troubleshooting any stepper motor system. This article will cover an overview of stepper motors what they are and how they work. Then we will discuss how to troubleshoot them. In the second article will also cover the electronics needed to make a stepper motor run. And discuss how to troubleshoot them.1 Stepper motors what they are and how they work A stepper or stepping motor converts electronic pulses into mechanical movement. Each electronic pulse step causes the shaft to rotate a certain number of degrees (step angle). Thus, a stepper motor can be operated in an open loop application, which means it can be told to go a certain distance at a certain speed without the need for any type of feedback. Figure 1 illustrates a simple application for a stepper motor each time the controller receives an input signal, the paper is driven a certain incremental distance. Another important characteristic of the stepper motor is that it can maintain the holding torque indefinitely when the rotor is stopped with out burning up the motor windings. When a stepper motor has a steady DC signal applied to one stator winding, the rotor will overcome the residual torque and line up with that stator field. The holding torque is defined as the amount of torque required to move the rotor one full

Stepper Motors Part 1 Motors

FIGURE 2 step with the stator energized. When no power is applied to the windings, a small magnetic force is developed between the permanent magnet and the stator. This magnetic force is called the residual, or detent torque. The detent torque can be noticed by turning a stepper motor by hand and is generally about one-tenth of the holding torque. How does a stepper motor work? Figure 2 illustrates a typical

1 While a lot of formulas may help you design a new stepper motor, what we will try to do in these articles is give a general overview of stepper motors. If you would like to get deeper into stepper motors, like a lot of formulas I suggest two books: Industrial Electronics by Colin D. Simpson , published by Prentice Hall PTR. Copyright 1996, and Stepping Motors and their Microprocessor Controls by Takashi Kenjo and Akira Sugawara, published by Oxford Science Publications Copyright 1994. (Both were used as references for this article.)

one phase step sequence for a two phase motor. In Step 1, phase A of a two-phase stator is energized. This magnetically locks the rotor in the position shown, since unlike poles attract. When phase A is turned off and phase B is turned on, the rotor rotates 90 clockwise. In Step 3, phase B is turned off and phase A is turned on but with the polarity reversed from Step 1. This causes another 90 rotation. In Step 4, phase A is turned off and phase B is turned on, with polarity reversed from Step 2. Repeating this sequence causes the rotor to rotate clockwise in 90 steps. There are three main types of stepper motors: permanent-magnet (PM), variable reluctance (VR) and Hybrid. The permanent-magnet (PM) stepper motor operates on the reaction between a permanentmagnet rotor and an electromagnetic field. One of the most common PM motors are of the Tin Can or claw-tooth type See Figure 3.

Figure 3 In these tin can steppers, the rotor shaft is surrounded by a magnet with radially opposing poles. It has no teeth. The stator is a series of poles with wound wire coils. Because of the magnet, the rotor will resist movement even when the motor is not energized. Permanent magnet step motors are used in low-cost, low-power applications, the bill feeder inside vending machines is driven by a permanent magnet step motor.

The variable-reluctance (VR) are misaligned with each other by a stepper motor differs from the PM half-tooth pitch. Torque is created stepper in that it has no in the hybrid motor by the permanent-magnet rotor and no interaction of the magnetic field of residual torque to hold the rotor at the permanent magnet and the one position when turned off. This magnetic field produced by the type of motor operates on the stator. Most hybrid steppers are principle of minimizing the NEMA size motors See Figure 5. reluctance along the path of the applied magnetic field. One of the first uses for Variable-reluctance stepper motors was to move the direction indicator of torpedo tubes and guns on British warships in the 1920s. Shortly thereafter they were employed by the US Navy for a similar purpose. The hybrid step motor consists of two pieces of soft iron, as well as Figure 5 an axially magnetized, round rotor. The term hybrid is derived from the The windings for steppers come fact that the motor is operated in two types Bipolar and Unipolar. under the combined principles of There are a number of advantages the permanent magnet and to each type of winding. variable-reluctance stepper motors. Bipolar see Figure 6. The stator core structure of a hybrid motor is essentially the same as its VR counterpart. The main difference is that in the VR motor, only one of the two coils of one phase is wound on one pole, while a typical hybrid motor will have coils of two different phases wound on the same pole. The two coils at a pole are wound in a configuration known as a bifilar connection. Each pole of a hybrid motor is covered with Figure 6 uniformly spaced teeth made of The two-phase stepping soft steel See Figure 4. The teeth sequence described earlier utilizes on the two sections of each pole a bipolar coil winding. Each phase consists of a single winding. This is referred to as a bipolar winding because the current flow, on the coils is reversed. By reversing the current in the windings, electromagnetic polarity is reversed.

Figure 4

Unipolar see Figure 7

2. The brushes go bad. There are no brushes in a stepper motor. Therefore, this will never be a cause of failure.

Figure 7 Another common winding is the unipolar winding some times called four-phase steppers. This consists of two windings on a pole connected in such a way that when one winding is energized a magnetic north pole is created; when the other winding is energized, a south pole is created. This is referred to as a unipolar winding because the electrical polarity, i.e. current flow, from the drive to the coils is never reversed. Testing Stepper motors Typically there are four things that can go wrong with a motor in general. 1. They burn up. 2. The brushes go bad. 3. The bearings go bad. 4. The technician breaks them. Lets look at each of these in respect to the stepper motor. 1. They burn up. An important characteristic of the stepper motor is that it can maintain the holding torque indefinitely when the rotor is stopped. If a stepper motor stalls out it will not typically burn up as with most AC and DC motors. If the motor does burn up it typically indicates a driver problem. We will get more in why this is the case in the next article. Just replacing the motor will cause the motor to burn up again. This is a very uncommon problem with stepper motors unless there is a bad driver causing it.

Bipolar or Unipolar motor. Figure 8 A Bipolar will always have 4 leads. A Unipolar will have 5 or 6 leads. If 5 leads, the two common wires are connected. A few motors you run into will have 8 leads, these can be wired as either a Unipolar or Bipolar See Figure 9. Using the Ohmmeter, you can check the resistance of the windings. On a Bipolar the resistance for both winding should be the same in both directions Figure 10. In a unipolar

Figure 8 3. The bearings go bad. The cooler the motor stays the longer the bearings will last. But at times the bearings will go bad. Still this is not a very common problem. The bearings in most cheap motors are rated at 3K hours or more, and most high-end quality motors are rated at 90K to 100K hours. 4. The technician breaks them. OK, this is the most common cause of failure for stepper motors. When working with stepper motors be careful with them. They do not need to be handled like fine china but you cannot fix one with a hammer. Most cheap motors only use glue to hold the shaft to the rotor, and most quality steppers will use grooving along with adhesive. Testing. You want to test the motor. First us an ohm meter. It will help you tell if a winding is burnt up and what type of stepper motor you have. Most likely you will have a

Figure 10 winding the resistance from each phase to com should be the same in both directions Figure 11. After you have checked the motor with the ohmmeter, you can use a 9V battery to step the motor through its paces. This will confirm the

Figure 11 motor windings are good. You can

use the charts in Figure 9 to assist with this. Also turn the motor by hand while listening for bad bearings. All PM and hybrid stepper motors will have some detent torque. PM will have more than the hybrid steppers. If the leads of the stepper motor are touching the detent torque will be greatly exaggerated. Be careful! Some technicians have falsely linked this to bad bearings. If the bearings are bad, there will usually be extra axial play in the motor. If possible check against a known good motor. When replacing a motor many technicians wonder what the color code for the wires is. Remember the windings make up an electromagnet. So as long as you have the windings grouped correctly (Phase 1 and 3 together and Phase 2 and 4 together) the worst that will happen when you go to run the motor is that it will run backwards. If it does just swap one set of phases (1 and 3 or 2 and 4). Next time we will get more in to electronics of stepper motors. We will get more into the differences between Bipolar vs. Unipolar windings and how Constant Current and Constant Voltage types of stepper motor drives work. We will finally answer the question, why do I use a 5V motor when I have a 24V supply?

Figure 9