A nice stepper motor tutorial
I just stumbled upon a very nice website that has a great tutorial on driving stepper motors. As this is something you might actually be doing if you do any sort of robot, I thought a link was in order.
Stepping motors can be viewed as electric motors without commutators. Typically, all windings in the motor are part of the stator, and the rotor is either a permanent magnet or, in the case of variable reluctance motors, a toothed block of some magnetically soft material. All of the commutation must be handled externally by the motor controller, and typically, the motors and controllers are designed so that the motor may be held in any fixed position as well as being rotated one way or the other. Most steppers, as they are also known, can be stepped at audio frequencies, allowing them to spin quite quickly, and with an appropriate controller, they may be started and stopped "on a dime" at controlled orientations.
Pretty neat animated GIF, too.
Posted by elkaim at December 1, 2003 4:20 PM