Temperature of the stepper motor

Community General Discussions
1

I have created a small application with a stepper motor driven by a sparkfun big easy drive.

 

motor is here:

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9238

driver is this one:

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10735

control is made from arduino, source code taken from this example:

http://bildr.org/2011/06/easydriver/

The motor is powered from a laptop charger which is rated at 12V-6Amps.

However, the motor is rated at 0.3 Amps.

The problem is that the temperature of the motor is very high. I have measured it after 10 minutes of run and it is above 95.5 Celsius. I suspect that is more because there is no fluctuation in the measurement ... so I suppose that is the maximal temperature that my probe can measure.

my question is why it is so hot ? Is this normal ?

I know that the source is rated at 6-Amps ... but the motor should take what it needs (0.3 Amps) not more ... right ?

Here is a picture with my device

thanks,

mihai

2

For future reference

pololu drivers would have saved you money, however, they are laid out as a Dual Inline Pin setup rather than all connections on one side and motor output on the other.