Does this stepper motor need a driver?

**Adman** · 03-19-2008

Hi all...

I posted recently about being a software guy in a hardware world. Well, I'm still here. I hope you don't mind some silly questions.

My friend and I each recently bought the following stepper motor:

http://www.futurlec.com/PM20S.shtml

It appears that it comes with it's own driver integrated circuit. Is that right?

Some more information is here:

http://www.eminebea.com/content/html...ecircuit.shtml

From that information, can someone point me in the right direction on how to drive this thing? I'm guessing that I feed in +12v to the common (red) wires, and then +5v signals to the other wires as noted in the tables. Am I on the right track?

I'm really new to the electronics side of things, so I appreciate your help.

Adman

**jdolecki** · 03-19-2008

If you look at your data sheet were it says "Number of steps pre revolution" is says (20 steps or 18 degree step angle) that means you motor will require 20 pulses and rotate 18 degrees each pulse to make 1 revolution. You also have to send the pulses in the proper order.

If you look at the second data sheet it shows you the pulse sequence of which coil to pulse and in which order to go that way.

Also see how the wiring diagram shows the coils 1,2,3,4.

So yes you will need some way of generating a specific number of pulses and in the proper sequence to rotate the motor, which is what a stepper driver does. You tell it which direction and how many pulses you want and it moves the motor.

I hope i made it a little bit clearer and without all the technical mumbo jumbo.

There are a million place to get information on how stepper motors operate.

Just yahoo or google stepper motors.

Do you have any type of controller now?

**Adman** · 03-19-2008

Hi... yes, I've read a lot about stepper motors, and I know that I need to generate pulses in the proper sequence.

Let me put it another way... if I bought a stepper motor without any sort of driver, than pulsing the stepper motor ITSELF wouldn't work, right? You need to pulse some sort of controller, which uses those pulses to properly route a higher voltage signal to the motor.

My question is: does this stepper motor have the circuitry needed in order to do that. And I think that it does... I think that I can input +12v on the common wire, and the pulses come down the other wires (in the provided sequence), and I don't need any other driver/controller.

Thanks for your help... I hope I clarified my question a little.

I am planning on generating the pulses from my PC parallel port. If I hook up the data lines directly to the input lines on this motor, will it work? I guess that's the root of my question.

Adman