stepper motor traverse

[David King]

Here's some stuff I've come across that looks potentially useful for a DC stepper motor traverse

Here's a real basic stepper motor controller kit for $25...
http://www.herbach.com/Merchant2/mer...ode=STEPMTRCTL

Here's a much more useful stepper controller for larger steppers and includes a serial printer port for cnc control from a computer for $70.
http://www.herbach.com/Merchant2/mer...ode=STEPMTRCTL

This place sells a lot of surplus stepper motors and accessories, Noth the cheapest but you get full documentation and you can return what you can't use..

[RedeemerbassesScott]

Here's some stuff I've come across that looks potentially useful for a DC stepper motor traverse

Here's a real basic stepper motor controller kit for $25...
http://www.herbach.com/Merchant2/mer...ode=STEPMTRCTL

Here's a much more useful stepper controller for larger steppers and includes a serial printer port for cnc control from a computer for $70.
http://www.herbach.com/Merchant2/mer...ode=STEPMTRCTL

This place sells a lot of surplus stepper motors and accessories, Noth the cheapest but you get full documentation and you can return what you can't use..

Hey David here is a link to a video of my winder I'm in the process of building. You may find it interesting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1qnbqcpR_c You helped me a while back via email when I was starting to build my own headless hardware, do you remember?

[mbetter]

I'm not sure how well that board would handle microstepping. This board looks interesting to me, though I'm not quite sure how much it would end up costing:

http://www.embeddedtronics.com/microsteppld.html

By my math, it seems that, unless you do some severe gear reduction, you'd be heavily in the micro-stepping range with a 1.8° stepper motor directly driving a traverse.

[Joe Gwinn]

By my math, it seems that, unless you do some severe gear reduction, you'd be heavily in the micro-stepping range with a 1.8° stepper motor directly driving a traverse.

For homebrew stuff, toothed pulleys and little timing belts are much easier to handle, and alignment is far less critical than for gears. Also, if one uses bearing plates or pillow blocks that allow some angular misalignment (+/- 5 degrees being typical), life is easier. One can then build using wood or MDF and use hand tools. Gears and rigid bearings almost demand a machine shop.

[mbetter]

For homebrew stuff, toothed pulleys and little timing belts are much easier to handle, and alignment is far less critical than for gears. Also, if one uses bearing plates or pillow blocks that allow some angular misalignment (+/- 5 degrees being typical), life is easier. One can then build using wood or MDF and use hand tools. Gears and rigid bearings almost demand a machine shop.

Very true. I was basing my opinions on a design similar to RG's wherein a stepper motor directly drives a toothed pulley with a timing belt. The beauty of that design was that the motors themselves serve as the mechanical framework for the traverse, eliminating the need for additional pulleys, axles, bearings, etc. The downside would be that, as I wrote above, 1 turn of the motor = 1 pulley circumference travel of the traverse, requiring small pulleys and microstepping in order to achieve the required precision.

Using a 1.8° stepper and 3/4" diameter pulley, one step of the motor would move the traverse approximately four thicknesses of 42AWG wire. To be able to put one wind next to the last, you'd need to either reduce the diameter of your toothed pulley to .15" or split each step into at least four microsteps.