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A stepper motor circuit uses voltage pulses to rotate the mechanical shaft in discrete steps. The number of pulses and frequency determine speed, and there are three types of stepper motors: variable reluctance, permanent magnet, and hybrid. A microcontroller can be used to program the circuit for efficient control.
A stepper motor circuit is a circuit in which a stepper motor is driven by a series of voltage pulses, which allows the mechanical shaft to rotate in discrete motions. Unlike a typical motor that rotates continuously, a stepper motor does not have this continuous motion but moves in a discrete number of steps. A complete revolution – a 360 degree turn – of a stepper motor is divided into a series of divisions. Some stepper motors might have up to 200 divisions. This means that 200 pulses of electrical voltage must be sent to the stepper motor for a complete revolution to occur, since a separate pulse must be sent for each step.
In addition to specifying the number of voltage pulses sent to the stepper motor to determine the rotation of the shaft, another main characteristic that is determined by the user is the frequency of the stepper motor pulses, which controls its speed . To increase the speed of a stepper motor, the frequency of the pulses sent to the motor is increased. To decrease the speed, the pulse frequency is decreased. This is necessary when a certain speed is desired for an application.
There are three basic types of stepper motors, which are variable reluctance stepper motors, permanent magnet stepper motors, and hybrid stepper motors. A variable reluctance motor is a motor consisting of an iron rotor which is toothed and moves by attraction towards energized stator poles. This type of motor does not contain permanent magnets. This differs from a permanent magnet stepper motor, which has a permanent magnet as a rotor but does not consist of teeth.
In a permanent magnet motor, there are four magnetic poles which act as energized windings to attract the rotor to move. Hybrid stepper motors combine the characteristics of both variable reluctance motors and permanent magnet motors. They are constructed using a permanent magnet rotor with multi-tooth stator poles.
A stepper motor circuit can be linked together by connecting the stepper motor to a stepper motor driver, which is typically a microcontroller. Stepper motors have input pins that allow you to send digital pulses to control the motion and speed of the motors. With a device such as a microcontroller, a stepper motor circuit can be programmed via software to control all aspects of stepper motor control. Therefore, a user would not have to manually pulse the motor, which is not as efficient as using software to program a stepper motor circuit.
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