ELECTRO-MECHANICAL

SYSTEMS (EEEB413)
Stepper Motor

Dr.Mohamed Ansari M.Nainar

Sr.Lecturer, ME
BN-1-026, COE
UNITEN, Malaysia
Tel Ext: 2213
Email: ansari@uniten.edu.my
 Book Reference
Theodore Wildi, Electrical Machines, Drives, and Power Systems, IE,
6th Edition, Prentice Hall
 Pre-requisites
Types of Motors
Brushed

DC Brushless

Split Capacitor
Stepper

Shaded Pole
Universal
Single Phase
Induction
Capacitor Start

AC Synchronous Split Phase

AC machines (generators and motors)

Two major classes:
Poly Phase Synchronous machines
Induction Induction machines
Two major parts of machines
Stator
Rotor 3
 Outline
• Introduction to Stepper Motor
• Types of stepper motor
• Constructional features
• Principle of operation
• Slew speed
• Ramping
• Instability and resonance
• Effect of inertia
• Effect of mechanical load
• Torque Vs current
• Start-stop stepping rate
• Applications of stepper motor
4
 Introduction to Stepper Motor
• Stepper motors are special motors that are used when
motion and position have to be precisely controlled.
• Stepper motor rotates in discrete steps, each step
corresponding to a pulse that is supplied to one of its stator
windings.
• A stepper motor can advance by 900, 450, 180 or by fraction
of a degree pulse.
• Depending on the pulse rate the speed of the motor can be
made to advance very slowly or at high speeds(4000rpm)
• Stepper motors can turn clockwise or anti-clockwise
direction, depending upon the sequence of the pulses that
are applied to the windings. 5
 Introduction to Stepper Motor
• Steppers are generally commutated open loop, i.e. the driver
has no feedback on where the rotor actually is.
• Stepper motor systems must thus generally be over
engineered, especially if the load inertia is high, or there is
widely varying load, so that there is no possibility that the
motor will lose steps.
• A new development in stepper control is to incorporate a
rotor position feedback (e.g. an encoder or resolver), so that
the commutation can be made optimal for torque generation
according to actual rotor position.

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 Introduction to Stepper Motor
• This turns the stepper motor into a high pole count brushless
servo motor, with exceptional low speed torque and position
resolution.
• An advance on this technique is to normally run the motor
in open loop mode, and only enter closed loop mode if the
rotor position error becomes too large — this will allow the
system to avoid hunting or oscillating, a common servo
problem.

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Specifications of a Stepper Motor

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 Types of Stepper Motor
There are three main types of stepper motors:
• Variable Reluctance Stepper motor
• Permanent magnet Stepper
• Hybrid Synchronous Stepper motor

Permanent Magnet
Stepper Motor 9
Hybrid Stepper Motor
 Construction of A Stepper Motor
• Stepper motor consists of a
stator having three salient poles
and a 2- pole rotor made of soft
iron.

• The windings can be

successively connected to a DC Exploded view of a Hybrid Stepper Motor
power supply by means of
switches.

• Stepper motors use either a

bipolar or a unipolar winding on
the stator.
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 Bipolar winding of Stepper Motor
• Stepper motors use either a bipolar
or a unipolar winding on the stator.

Hybrid stepper motor with bipolar winding 11

 Unipolar winding of Stepper Motor

• Consists of two
coils per pole instead
of only one coil.

Unipolar winding, switches and power supply of a Stepper Motor

Current pulse in a wave drive using Unipolar winding of a Stepper Motor

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 Torque Vs. Speed characteristics of
Bipolar Vs.Unipolar winding

• Consists of two coils • Consists of one coil

per pole instead of per pole only.
only one coil.
Torque Vs Speed of a Bipolar and Unipolar winding Hybrid Stepper Motor 13
 Working Principle of a Stepper Motor
Slew Speed
Ramping
Instability and Resonance
Effect of Inertia
Effect of Mechanical Load
Torque Vs.Current
Start-stop stepping rate
Stepper Motor in which each step is 600

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 Slewing speed
• A stepper motor can be made to run at uniform speed
without starting and stopping at every step. When the
motor runs this way it is said to be slewing.
• Since the motor runs uniformly, there is no inertia effect.
• Consequently, for a given stepping rate, the motor can
carry a greater load torque when it is slewing.

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Stepper Motor Torque Vs Speed Curve
Ramping
• When a stepper motor is carrying a load, it cannot
suddenly go from zero to a stepping rate of 5000 sps. In
the same way, a stepper motor that is slewing at 5000 sps
cannot be brought to a dead stop in one step.

• Thus, to bring a motor up to a speed, it must gradually

accelerate or to bring a motor to stop, it must gradually
decelerate. This process of accelerate or decelerate is
known as Ramping.

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Instability and resonance
• When a stepper motor is operating at a certain slewing
speed, it may become unstable.

• The rotor may turn erratically or simply chatter without

rotating anymore.

• This instability, often called resonance, is due to the

natural vibration of a stepper motor, which manifests
itself at one or more range of speeds. (For eg. The
range of instability may lie between 2000sps and 8000 sps.)

• Nevertheless, it is possible to ramp through this range

without losing step and thereby attain stable slewing
speeds between 8000 and 15000 sps.
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 Effect of Inertia
Motor Condition:
• Motor operates at No-Load (No inertia)
• ,, Low load (Low inertia) Stepper Motor in which each step is 600
• Increase in inertia causes
increase in amplitude and
oscillations.
• Viscous damping is necessary to Speed & Postion Vs Time in ms (No-Load)
damp the oscillations more
quickly.

Time to reach 600 has increase from 2ms - 4 ms

Effect of Viscous Damping 18

 Effect of Mechanical Load
Motor Condition:
• Rotor has low inertia and small Stepper Motor in which each step is 600

amount of viscous damping due to

bearing friction.

• If the rotor is coupled with

mechanical load, then it would Speed & Postion Vs Time in ms (No-Load)

take longer time to reach the 600

position compared to no-load
condition. (i.e from 2ms – 4 ms)

• Over shoot is smaller and the

oscillations are damped more Coupled with Mechanical load

quickly. 19
 Current Vs Torque characteristic curve
• Torque developed by a
stepper motor depends
on the intensity of the
current.

• When the motor is at

rest, a holding current
must continue to flow in
the last winding in order
Pull torque in N-m Vs Current in Amps
to maintain the rotor in
locked position.

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 Start-stop stepping rate
• Start-stop
characteristic has been
shown in figure.

• Rotor must settle

down before it begins
the next step.

• Stepping rate =
1000/6ms = 167 sps
Start-stop stepping rate
• Higher the load and inertia, lower
should be the stepping rate.

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 Applications of Stepper motor
Precise positioning device in machine tools;
• Multi-axis machine CNC machines
• X-Y plotters
• typewriters
• printers
• tape decks
• Valves
• Floppy disc drives
• Flatbed scanners
• Pick-n-place robot arm drives
• Tool pallete indexing drives
• Conveyer system drives

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 SUMMARY
We have studied the following sub-topics:
1. Introduction to stepper motors
2. Constructional features of stepper motors
3. Working principle
4. Stepper motor characteristics
1. Effect of Inertia
2. Effect of Mechanical load
3. Torque Vs Current
4. Start-stop stepping rate
5. Applications of Stepper morors
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