Stepper motors can be classified as dc and syncrhonous motors, as the name suggest these

motors move in discrete angle steps – but how do so?

Here we’re gonna get an overview about this presentation:

Types by functioning

- Permanente magnetized stepper motor

- Variable reluctance stepper motor
- Hybrid stepper motor

Here there is a stator of a very simple stepper motor with four stator teeths

and two motos coils

When the motor coils are connected to dc voltaje, a magnetic field with a north and south pole
is excited at his teeths.

The magnetic poles can be interchanged by reverse the current Flow. By switching the current
of the motor coils in certain sequence, a rotating magnetic stator field can be created

So, let’s place a permanente magnet within the stator, it is obvius that this magnet aligns with
the poles of the stator. That’s how a permanente stepper Works

Advantages:

High torque, but also big step angle

The Step angle can be calculated by a simple equation where the step angle = :
360
∝=
2∗𝑝∗𝑚
Where : 𝑝 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑜𝑙 𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑟𝑠(𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑜𝑟), 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑝ℎ𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑠 (𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟)
With the variable reluctance stepper, we can get a low-cost stepper motor. The rotor is made
of soft iron.

The coils are energized in a certain sequence, so only one pairo f rotor teeth are alined to
stator at a time

The rotors soft iron salient poles offer a lower reluctance to the magnetic lines, because these
magnetic lines intend to go the shortest way, torque is created. The big disadvantage here by
is the lack of a permanente magnet. This has a negative effect on the torque that is significant
decreased.

The most commonly used stepper nowadays it the so-called hybrid stepper, which combines
aspects of both (permanente and variable reluctance stepper) with this motor you can achieve
very small step angle

The rotor consist of a permanente magnet and two cups rings of soft iron, the Surface of these
cups have precisely ground teeths. In this example 50 teeths. When these cups enclose the
magnets, one ring becomes the north pole and the other the south pole. To give these cups
and offset to each other, one cup is rotates. Here by 3.6 degrees

Let’s see in a two dimensional view to get a better understanding

Note that the rotos has 50 teeths and the stator 48, so we can distinguish sections where
different magnetized poles are alignes to each other , and other sections where the opposite
poles are only half aligned to each other as we can see

Opposite poles attract each other, on the other hand between evenly magnetized pole there is
repulsión, the motor is now in a stable position, now let’s switch this motor to the next step.
The rotor rotates by 1.8 degrees to reach a new stable position.

Operating modes

There are three commonly used excitation modes for stepper motors: full step, half step and
micro stepping, by these modes you determine the performance and torque of the stepper

The full step drive mode provides high torque, because always all coils are energized at any
time, the rotos needs four steps to complete a 360 degree rotation. However, you have full
and constant torque all these steps. This mode does not improve the resolution.

In half mode step sequence we get a step angle half to the angle in full mode. So the resolution
already increased to the double. On the other hand we get no constant torque, so the
resolution increased to the double.

However microstepping is the most common method of controlling stepper motors nowadays.
Here the coils are provided with a voltaje similar to the form of sine wave. As a result, we get
smooth motion of the rotor, les stress to the parts and accurac of the stepper motor increases
significantly. Unfortunately in microstepping the torque is decreased about 30 percent