Phidgets Stepper Unipolar 4-Motor Stepper Motor Controller

Help & Support Robot Parts
1

Hello,

We are looking for a low cost stepper motor controller that can be used with a PC, driven
through the USB port. the Phidgets Stepper controller is advertised as a Unipolar controller.
However we are dealing with bipolar (4 wire) stepper motors. We are looking to control
2 axes with a maximum of 2A per phase. We are looking for a solution that is ideally under
$100 per axis. We need a good solid controller which has the basic stepper motor commands.
We originally were going to use an Arduino, but we ran into issues where the learning curve
was too great and also wanted to use our MS Windows Visual Studio and Windows Forms
programming experience to stick with that platform.

Thanks for any help or feedback on this.

2

Consider 2x Cytron 3-40V, 2A Unipolar / Bipolar Stepper Motor Controller with 2x Cytron USB to UART Converter

3

Ah. If that’s the case, then it can rotate at a maximum of 5 rotations per second, which would translate to 1.25 inches per second… a lead screw + small stepper might not be the best option.

4

Considered suggesting that, but you said 2A minimum, and that one can provide 1.5A max.

It depends on the wheel’s diameter and the step angle of the motor.

5

So if the controller can do 1000 steps per second at 1.8 degrees per step (0.0314 rad/s), it can rotate at 31.4 rad/s. Multiply this by the radius of the wheel it’s connected to to get the linear speed. For example if it’s connected to a 2" radius wheel, it will move at 62.82 inches per second.

6

Thanks so much for the suggestion. I will check out this controller.

Mike

7

After looking at this it does control stepper motors, but is limited to 1000 steps/second.
That seems a little bit slow. We have carriage systems that we need to move roughly 1 ft in 1 second.
1000 steps I don’t think would cut it, would it?

8

I am not driving a wheel with the stepper motor. I am connected directly to a hi-lead leadscrew with a pitch of 0.250"

roton.com/Mating_Components.aspx?family=7060404

For every turn of the motor i belive the carriage can advance .250"

9

This one looks like it might be a little more up to the task:

Phidget Stepper Bipolar 1-Motor Stepper Motor Controller
Product code : RB-Phi-74

robotshop.com/phidgetstepper-bipolar-stepper-motor-controller.html

10

The step angle is 1.8degrees (200 steps/revolution)

Actually 1 to 1.5A per phase is probably sufficient. We are not running these motors continuously, so the
duty cycle is pretty low. We are running them for 5 seconds, a 10 second wait, for 5 more seconds, wait of 30 seconds, etc.