RS232 Driver for 3X Stepper Motor Using Stamp II

Overview

Simple hardware and software techniques are illustrated in this project wherein 3 common 4-coil stepper motors are driven and controlled using a single Stamp II board.

Details

The device is a modified version of the single axis Stamp I driver but with an adjustment for running 3 motors simultaneously on a Stamp II board which has been successfully tested with RS stepper motors. A terminal or PC that uses a 38400 baud serial connection provides the commands that are accepted by the stepper controller. Any stepper that draws 500mA or less per coil can be accepted in this hardware application.

A prompt is sent to be displayed on the terminal screen when power is first applied to the Stamp and a string that represents the direction is typed by the user. The Stamp starts the motor running as soon as the user presses enter, return, or any non-numerical character at the end of the line. The Stamp sends a new prompt to the terminal when the stepping sequence is over.

The precision of the steppers are obtained from the fixed stepping angle and can be driven by magnetic fields interaction.