Re: Hairbrained idea, just slightly OT

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@y..., "hornadayb" <hornadayb@h...> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Is it possible to fasten two weak steppers together (same steps,
> same type even) to get a more usable torque range?
>
> The reason I as is: I have quite a few old 5-wire steppers from
> floppy drives just sitting around and was thinking about building

a

> plotter and some other useful toys out of them. As they are, they
> are pretty weak but I thought I might be able to energise them and
> conect them mechanically and drive them from the same circuit.

Will

> it work?
>
> Thanks,
> Brian

Hello,

When ganging the stepper motors, it would be advantageous to use a
spider coupling which is available from Jameco (www.jameco.com). The
spider coupling with its rubber insert will diminish the bucking
interplay of the motors mentioned in a previous post. The maximum RPM
of the ganged stepper motors will be derated.

The torque of a single unipolar stepper motor may be doubled by
simultaneously and appropriately energizing two windings in the
proper sequence using simple 4 phase driver circuitry. We have
successfully used this method for several light duty applications.
We have schematics of a simple discrete transistor driver, a PIC
microcontroller based driver and the appropriate sequencing tables.
If you are interested, I will email this documentation to you as a
graphics file.

Ned