A stepper motor is a brushless, synchronous electric motor that can divide a full rotation into a large number of steps, for example, 200 steps. When commutated electronically, the motor's position can be controlled precisely, without any feedback mechanism (see open loop control).

A stepper motor's design is virtually identical to that of a low-speed synchronous AC motor. In that application, the motor is driven with two phase AC, one phase usually derived through a phase shifting capacitor. Another similar motor is the switched reluctance motor, which is a very large stepping motor with a reduced pole count, and generally closed-loop commutated.

Stepper Motor Characteristics

A stepper motor generates excellent torque at low speed, and falls rapidly as it speeds up. The torque curve may be extended by using current limiting drivers and increasing the driving voltage -- the best performing drive systems use line voltages.

Steppers exhibit more vibration than other motor types, as the discrete step tends to snap the rotor from one position to another. This vibration can become very bad at some speeds, and can cause the motor to lose torque. The effect can be mitigated by accelerating quickly through the problem speed range, physically dampening the system, or using a micro-stepping driver. Motors with greater number of phases also exhibit smoother operation than those with fewer phases.

Fundamentals of Operation

Stepper motors operate much differently from normal DC motors, which simply spin when voltage is applied to their terminals. Stepper motors, on the other hand, effectively have multiple "toothed" electromagnets arranged around a central metal gear, as shown at right. The electromagnets are energized by an external control circuit, such as a microcontroller. To make the motor shaft turn, first one electromagnet is given power, which makes the gear's teeth magnetically attracted to the electromagnet's teeth. When the gear's teeth are thus aligned to the first electromagnet, they are slightly offset from the next electromagnet. So when the next electromagnet is turned on and the first is turned off, the gear rotates slightly to align with the next one, and from there the process is repeated. Each of those slight rotations is called a "step." In that way, the motor can be turned a precise angle. There are two basic arrangements for the electromagnetic coils: bipolar and unipolar.

Open Loop vs. Closed Loop Commutation

Steppers are generally commutated open loop, ie. the driver has no feedback on where the rotor actually is. Stepper motor systems must thus generally be over engineered, especially if the load inertia is high, or there is widely varying load, so that there is no possibility that the motor will lose steps. This has often caused the system designer to consider the trade-offs between a closely sized but expensive servo system and an oversized but relatively cheap stepper.

A new development in stepper control is to incorporate a rotor position feedback (eg. an encoder or resolver), so that the commutation can be made optimal for torque generation according to actual rotor position. This turns the stepper motor into a high pole count brushless servo motor, with exceptional low speed torque and position resolution. An advance on this technique is to normally run the motor in open loop mode, and only enter closed loop mode if the rotor position error becomes too large -- this will allow the system to avoid hunting or oscillating, a common servo problem.

Two Phase Stepper Motors

There are two basic winding arrangements for the electromagnetic coils in a two phase stepper motor: bipolar and unipolar.

Unipolar motors

A unipolar stepper motor has logically two windings per phase, one for each direction of current. Since in this arrangement a magnetic pole can be reversed without switching the direction of current, the commutation circuit can be made very simple (eg. a single transistor) for each winding. Typically, given a phase, one end of each winding is made common: giving three leads per phase and six leads for a typical two phase motor. Often, these two phase commons are internally joined, so the motor has only five leads.

A microcontroller or stepper motor controller can be used to activate the drive transistors in the right order, and this ease of operation makes unipolar motors popular with hobbyists; they are probably the cheapest way to get precise angular movements.

(For the experimenter, one way to distinguish common wire from a coil-end wire is by measuring the resistance. Resistance between common wire and coil-end wire is always half of what it is between coil-end and coil-end wires. This is due to the fact that there is actually twice the length of coil between the ends and only half from center (common wire) to the end.)

A six lead unipolar motor may be driven by a bipolar driver. In this case, one of the windings on each phase is wasted as it never carries current.

Bipolar motor

Bipolar motors have logically a single winding per phase. The current in a winding needs to be reversed in order to reverse a magnetic pole, so the driving circuit must be more complicated, typically with an H-bridge arrangement. There are two leads per phase, none are common.

Because windings are better utilised, they are more powerful than a unipolar motor of the same weight.

8 Lead Stepper

An 8 lead stepper is wound like a unipolar stepper, but the leads are not joined to common internally to the motor. This kind of motor can be wired in several configurations:

• Unipolar.
• Bipolar with series windings. This gives higher inductance but lower current per winding.
• Bipolar with parallel windings. This requires higher current but can perform better as the winding inductance is reduced.
• Bipolar with a single winding per phase. This method will run the motor on only half the available windings, which will reduce the available low speed torque but require less current.

Higher Phase Count Steppers

• Japan Servo three phase steppers.
• Oriental Motor five phase steppers.

Stepper Motor Drive Circuits

Stepper motor performance is strongly dependent on the drive circuit. Torque curves may be extended to greater speeds if the stator poles can be reversed more quickly, the limiting factor being the winding inductance. To overcome the inductance and switch the windings quickly, one must increase the drive voltage. This leads further to the necessity of limiting the current that these high voltages may otherwise induce.

L/R Drive Circuits

L/R drive circuits use the winding resistance to limit the current. Additional resistance may simply be added in series to the windings, in order to increase the drive voltage. This will waste power in the resistors, and generate heat. It is therefore considered a low performing option, albeit simple and cheap.

Chopper Drivers

Chopper drivers limit the current by chopping the drive voltage, typically with power transistors. This requires additional electronics to sense winding currents, and control the switching, but it is much more efficient in power usage than an L/R driver. Integrated electronics for this purpose are widely available.

Phase Current Waveforms

A stepper motor is a polyphase AC synchronous motor (see Theory below), and it is ideally driven by sinusoidal current. A full step waveform is a gross approximation of a sinusoid, and is the reason why the motor exhibits so much vibration. Various drive techniques have been developed to better approximate a sinusoidal drive waveform: these are half stepping and microstepping.

Full Step Drive (Two Phases On)

This is the usual method for full step driving the motor. Both phases are always on. The motor will have full rated torque.

Wave Drive

In this drive method only a single phase is activated at a time. It has the same number of steps as the full step drive, but the motor will have significantly less than rated torque. It is rarely used.

Half Stepping

When half stepping, the drive alternates between two phases on and a single phase on. This increases the angular resolution, but the motor also has less torque at the half step position (where only a single phase is on). This may be mitigated by increasing the current in the active winding to compensate. The advantage of half stepping is that the drive electronics need not change to support it.

Micro Stepping

In micro-stepping, the AC waveform is approximated by a step function. As these micro steps become smaller, the motor operation becomes more smooth. A typical micro-step driver may split a full step into as many as 128 or more micro-steps.

Theory

A step motor can be viewed as a synchronous AC motor with the number of poles (on both rotor and stator) increased, taking care that they have no common denominator. Additionally, soft magnetic material with many teeth on the rotor and stator cheaply multiplies the number of poles (reluctance motor). Modern steppers are of hybrid design, having both permanent magnets and soft iron cores.

To achieve full rated torque, the coils in a stepper motor must reach their full rated current during each step. Winding inductance and reverse EMF generated by a moving rotor tend to resist changes in drive current, so that as the motor speeds up, less and less time is spent at full current -- thus reducing motor torque. As speeds further increase, the current will not reach the rated value, and eventually the motor will cease to produce torque.

Pull-In Torque

This is the measure of the torque produced by a stepper motor when it is operated without an acceleration state. At low speeds the stepper motor can synchronise itself with an applied step frequency, and this Pull-In torque must overcome friction and inertia.

Pull-Out Torque

The stepper motor Pull-Out torque is measured by accelerating the motor to the desired speed and then increasing the torque loading until the motor stalls or "pulls Out of synchronism" with the step frequency. This measurement is taken across a wide range of speeds and the results are used to generate the stepper motors dynamic performance curve. As noted below this curve is affected by drive voltage, drive current and current switching techniques. It is normally recommended to use a safety factor of between 50% and 100% when comparing your desired torque output to the published "pull-Out" torque performance curve of a step motor.

Detent Torque

Synchronous electric motors using permanent magnets have a remnant position holding torque (called detente torque, and sometimes included in the specifications) when not driven electrically. Soft iron reluctance cores do not exhibit this behaviour.

Stepper Motor Ratings and Specifications

Stepper motors nameplates typically give only the winding current and occasionally the voltage and winding resistance. The rated voltage will produce the rated winding current at DC: but this is mostly a meaningless rating, as all modern drivers are current limiting and the drive voltages greatly exceed the motor rated voltage.

A stepper's low speed torque will vary directly with current. How quickly the torque falls off at faster speeds depends on the winding inductance and the drive circuitry it is attached to, especially the driving voltage.

Steppers should be sized according to published torque curve, which is specified by the manufacturer at particular drive voltages and/or using their own drive circuitry. It is not guaranteed that you will achieve the same performance given different drive circuitry, so the pair should be chosen with great care.

Applications

Computer-controlled stepper motors are one of the most versatile forms of positioning systems. They are typically digitally controlled as part of an open loop system, and are simpler and more rugged than closed loop servo systems.

Industrial applications are in high speed pick and place equipment and multi-axis machine CNC machines often directly driving lead screws or ballscrews. Other uses are in packaging machinery, and positioning of valve pilot stages for fluid control systems.

Commercially, in floppy disk drives, flatbed scanners, printers, plotters and many more devices.

See also

• Piezoelectric motor
• Brushless DC electric motor
• Three-phase AC synchronous motors
• Solenoid

•  • [ e] Electric motors
Broad Motor Categories	Synchronous motor • AC motor • DC Motor
Conventional Electric Motors	Induction • Brushed DC • Brushless DC • Stepper • Linear • Unipolar • Reluctance
Novel Electric Motors	Ball bearing • Homopolar • Piezoelectric • Ultrasonic • Electrostatic
Motor Controllers	Adjustable-speed drive • Direct Torque Control • Direct on line starter • Electronic speed control • Variable-frequency drive
See also	Barlow's Wheel • Nanomotor • Traction motor • Lynch motor • Mendocino motor • Repulsion motor • Inchworm motor • Booster (electric power) • Brush (electric)

External links

• Stepper Motor Tutorial and Controllers
• Stepper Motor Basics
• Control of Stepping Motors - A Tutorial
• Piezo Stepper Motor Animation
• Uni-polar verses Bi-polar
• Nice Animation of a stepping Motor

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