How to drive and operate the stepper motor driver

Micro stepping tells us how many micro steps should a stepper make to produce one full step. The 1/1 value tells us that the stepper must make one micro step to produce one full step (so there is no micro stepping). Value of 1/2 is called a half step and tells us that the stepper motor must make 2 micro steps for one full step. This means that the stepper motor should make 400 steps for one full revolution. A value of 1/8 will tell us that the motor should make 8 micro steps for one full step and 1600 steps for one full revolution. The same principle applies for all of the micro stepper motor for sale values. Most stepper motor drivers have a step/dir input. This means there are only two signals needed for each driver. The step signal is used for making steps and looks like a PWM signal. Each pulse means that the stepper will move for one step (or micro step). 

The dir signal means direction and is used to signal in which direction (CW or CCW) will the stepper turn. We have found out that the stepper motor driver is a must have if our design requires the use of a stepper motor since the controller can’t produce enough current and enough high voltage. There are different types but the chopper drivers offer the best performance. Also the micro stepping offers a great solution at first sight but produces a problem of decreased torque. It is still extremely useful but must be used properly. There are a lot of different ICs available for driving the stepper motor and many already made solutions like PoStep25-32 and PoStep60-256 which provide plug and play solution and are easy to use. 

When driving stepper motors with full steps the output of the stepper motor driver for sale looks like a square signal and produces rough movements. The bigger the micro stepping the more the output signal looks like a sine wave and the stepper motor moves more smoothly. But there is a downside to this. This most often occurs when the torque produced by the micro step is insufficient to overcome the friction torque of the component that’s being driven (such as a leadscrew or ball screw). With increasing micro stepping value the torque drops a quite lot and if the value is too great it could happen that the motor can’t produce enough torque to even turn. Usually 1/4, 1/8 or even 1/16 can produce satisfactory smooth movements while still producing enough torque.