Five Phase Stepper Motor -- I need to find a Driver

Jason,

Thanks for your continued interest.

Not sure if I told you, but I contacted the author of that paper that I told you about:

He couldn't find the PIC code that he had originally written, but very kindly persuaded one of his students to re-write it for me !! ... This world-wide communication is wonderful, when it gets you in touch with good people.

To my shame, I haven't built the driver yet [insert long list of excuses] ... but I have great confidence.

MichaelG.

For small 4-pole steppers the Polulu boards Michael pointed me at are great. They use an allegro chip and are really easy to drive.

Neil

Sorry, you're right Jason. In fact I have a good stock of 5-wire 4-pole motors and it's annoying that their construction doesn't make it easy to get inside to rewire them

Neil

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Neil,

Just for clarity ... My motor is Five Phase ... it has ten wires, and needs a special driver.

The various links posted earlier in this thread should explain.

MichaelG.

I hope I am not repeating what has already been said but it seems to me that if you do not want to use microstepping an arduino could be used as the controller with some fairly simple external electronics. I have written my own driver code for a simple four wire motor using this technique.

In a five phase motor the sequence of stepping is a bit more complicated. This link

**LINK**

shows that each phase (pair of wires) needs to be driven positive, negative or off. Using a standard h-bridge for each pahses means we need 3 arduino pins for each phase. By using a NAND gate for each phase this can be reduced to two. One pin controls the current direction and the other goes to the h-bridge enable.

I would be happy to help with the programming.

Roger Woollett

Roger ... That's very decent of you !!

As you will see from the link that I re-posted on 31/07/015, I do have a very clever PIC-based option available ... but I would also be very interested to discover how to drive this by Arduino.

Jason has already been great help, but I don't yet have a practical solution.

Please send me a P.M. if you are interested in discussing this off-forum.

Thanks again

MichaelG.

I have only rudimentary electronics experience so we might need help from the more knowledgable. If I read the datasheet correctly each phase can draw 0.5 amps and the coil resistance is 8 ohms meaning a supply voltage of 4 volts. This suggests to me a power supply of 2.5 amps at 4 volts.

This should be within the capabilities of the SN754410 chip I used.

We also need to establish the input to the arduino - what logic determines how many steps to take and how fast.

I will send a PM.

Edited By jason udall on 02/08/2015 17:47:58

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Thanks Jason !!

Sorry; I read your note in haste, and hadn't realised the full significance of what you were saying.

I already have the 1/2 H-Bridge Drivers in stock ... so just need to get on with it.

MichaelG.

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Thanks again, Jason

Wise Words indeed !!

I have some useful 'Kensington' 70 Watt Laptop Power Supplies, which can be programmed [with a couple of resistors] to limit both voltage and current.

... Hopefully, one of these will do the trick.

MichaelG.

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Edit: Added link, for the benefit of fellow dabblers.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 03/08/2015 10:37:35