Motor shield + unipolar stepper help needed

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Motor shield + unipolar stepper help needed

Post by entertailion »

I have an Arduino Uno and Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield. I'm trying to implement this x/y plotter: http://www.instructables.com/id/Interne ... ble/#step1

I decided to replace the DC motors in the design with stepper motors to get better accuracy. I initially used the stepper motor from Adafruit: https://www.adafruit.com/products/324
I got all the motors working for the design but the stepper motors did not have enough torque. So I decided to get stepper motors with higher torque from Lin Engineering: http://www.linengineering.com/LinE/cont ... /5718.aspx

I got model 5718M-04 which is a unipolar motor (I actually wanted to get bipolar motors but I must have clicked on the wrong link when I ordered the parts). The docs for the motors are:
http://www.linengineering.com/LinE/cont ... _Guide.pdf
The stepper motor has 8 lead wires, color code 1.

I'm stuck with how to wire this correctly to the motor shield. I've tried various combinations of the wires but I might be misunderstanding the instructions.

The power supply for the motor shield is 12V, 2A.

I'm a newbie and this is my first Arduino project. I would appreciate any help.

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Re: Motor shield + unipolar stepper help needed

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

For starters, that motor is too much for the standard L293D H-bridge chips. The L293D is only rated for 0.6A. To get the 1A per phase the motor wants, you would need to piggyback another L293D on to each of the existing ones.

You can wire it up using the bottom configuration shown for the 8-wire motor. Substitute M1, M2, M3, M4 for A, B, C, D.

entertailion
 
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Re: Motor shield + unipolar stepper help needed

Post by entertailion »

Many thanks for the quick reply!!
adafruit_support wrote:For starters, that motor is too much for the standard L293D H-bridge chips. The L293D is only rated for 0.6A. To get the 1A per phase the motor wants, you would need to piggyback another L293D on to each of the existing ones.
I would rather not do a piggyback; I'm just not comfortable messing with the standard board yet. Are there other motor boards for the Uno that would work for my application?
adafruit_support wrote:You can wire it up using the bottom configuration shown for the 8-wire motor. Substitute M1, M2, M3, M4 for A, B, C, D.
Does this mean that the motor board would only be able to support a single unipolar stepper motor that has 8 lead wires? I have two stepper motors. Also I'm confused what the "A/C Comm" and "B/D Comm" in the motor doc means.

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Re: Motor shield + unipolar stepper help needed

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

I would rather not do a piggyback; I'm just not comfortable messing with the standard board yet.
You can also try replacing the L293D's with SN754410's. These are rated for 1A (2A peak).
Does this mean that the motor board would only be able to support a single unipolar stepper motor that has 8 lead wires?
No. Each stepper needs 2 channels out of the 4 on the motor board.
Also I'm confused what the "A/C Comm" and "B/D Comm" in the motor doc means.
These are the "Gnd" terminals between the M1, M1 and M3, M4 terminals on the board.

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Re: Motor shield + unipolar stepper help needed

Post by entertailion »

I'll give the SN754410 a try. Thanks.

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Re: Motor shield + unipolar stepper help needed

Post by entertailion »

My motor shield now has two SN754410. I have one of the previous stepper motors from Adafruit (https://www.adafruit.com/products/324) wired into M3/M4 and that is working fine.

I've wired one of the 5718M-04 stepper motors in M1/M2. I have A (blue/white lead) and C (red) wired into M1, and B (green/white) and D (black) wired into M2. I have A/C comm (red/white and blue) and B/D comm (black/white and green) all wired into Gnd between M1 and M2. This is not working. I've also tried A/B in M1 and C/D in M2 and that also did not work.

Any help appreciated.

(I'm assuming the previous instructions to use M1/M2/M3/M4 for A/B/C/D was a typo since I need to control two stepper motors)

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Re: Motor shield + unipolar stepper help needed

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

Does the motor make any noise or indication that it is trying to move?

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Re: Motor shield + unipolar stepper help needed

Post by entertailion »

Discovered that M1/M2 stopped working at some point. M3/M4 is working fine. Found a soldering issue that was the culprit. After fixing that, both the stepper motors are working fine now.

Thanks for all the help.

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