Stepping Motor

Posted in Zen by yoshizen on September 26, 2021

While taking a stock, I’m finding so many unfinished work. (here, I mean unfinished kinetic sculptures ) Kinetic means, they move. Some people design a wooden winding up clock work though, I prefer to use electric motors and a mechanical metal structure. I used to use quite a few AC motors from the discarded fan or domestic kitchen ware though, to use the AC motors in the metal sculpture were not very safe = in fact they were the most hated object of the health and safety officials.

So, instead of AC motors, I changed them to the stepping motors from discarded printer. They comes in many different sizes and the shapes yet still, most of them work within the DC voltage of 5V to 24V = quite safe to handle. (So, I made many stepper driving circuits. Photo above —– Stepper is a motor = two coils pull the rotor magnet next by next = as soon as the magnet was pulled and moved near to the coil, next coil started to pull.) If you are interested in, just Google >Stepper driving circuit. or, >4030, 4013 Stepper driving circuit. ( = You may find many of the circuits using 4030, 4013 Chip and a NE555 which I used too —– 4030 and 4013 produces the pulse chain of one after another and the 555 gives the speed of them)

To drive a stepper, we need a timing pulse generator such as 555 and to produce the stepper driving pulse, 4030 and 4013 chip, then to drive the motor coils (in full-bridge or half) we needs power driver. Photo above middle may be 4013 and ULN2003 with 555 —– As a good counterpart, I found a small ready made board A4988 drive module (for 3D printer) which needs only an external timer(like a 555) and a switch for a direction. Photo right is a module which we can drive a stepper motor 5V~12V, up to 2A (LED was just to see the pulse speed) (in eBay x5 of them for £6 or so)

F-aperture of water dropped Canon G9 was driven by a 6mm stepper, so that 4 wire connection to an A4988 module I mentioned above can open, close the iris. (to connect those 4 wires to the module’s A1, B1, A2, B2 pin — find the order to make the iris blads work = try)

A fun part to use a 555 chip was, as its timing (frequency) was defined by a registor = it will be changed by a variable registor or even light dependent registor such as a CDS = Then, the stepper will move slowly when it is dark. 😀

This Stepper module was a lucky find of the day. Those x5 for £6 module all worked well (But the identical one with green board which I payed more was dead on arrival = that was what the Chinese product from eBay mean — We can not return the item which we have soldered wires and tested.) —– Even worse of Chinese business was = I bought PC fan 4 pin cable (which I can connect those driver board to stepper motor) from Banggood of China, but what I got was 3 pin cables. I contacted them through their complaint form (which they says “Respond within a day” ) = Nothing happened since. Then they sent me a mail saying that I didn’t answer them within a week (so, it will be out of time soon) — What ? They ARE the one who made a mistake = they ought to resolve the trouble. —– though, it’s mere £6 matter. Why bother. = No worth to spend a time. Just block their mail. (I alredy get the 4 pin cable from aother bender.)