Electronics > Electronics

How about this USB stepper controller?

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Charlie1138:
http://www.ar.com.au/~softmark/page44.html

I want to use this to replace the circuit board of my printer to control the motors. I was wondering if anyone was familiar with this product or if anyone can tell if it would be worth buying? Or if there is another better product I could buy. I emailed them and they said this would cost 85 Australian dollars plus shipping of 20 AUD.. which is equal to 85 USD.

I am also wondering if this would be able to work with the 2 high resolution encoders my printer has.

Another cool thing is that this supposedly comes with a program to control it, already. Which would be nice for me, because I know zero aobut programming. But, I am wondering  how programmable it is or if it is like a remote control or if it can be programmed to run automatically in a complex fashion repeatedly.

Basically, what I want to do is make a animatronic type robot, using my old inkjet printer, that is USB controlled. But I want it to move as accurately as possible. I'm not sure how accurate this controller is. I think it said it moves in half steps.. I think I  need something that does microstepping. Does that depend more on the stepper motor or the controller?

I hope I am making sense.. I am trying to figure all this out. Any help or input would be awsome.

Charlie1138:
Here's another one.. this one seems to have a lot of features. But it also seems to only control one motor. If I was to only control one motor at a time could I switch from motor to motor using this?

http://gamatronix.com/product_info.php/products_id/28

Admin:
that gamatronix controller is for regular dc motors, not stepper motors . . . are you sure if your printer has a stepper? dc motors would have 2 wires, steppers have 4+

if it is a stepper . . .

do a google search on stepper motor driver, the first page has good links

a few stepper drivers:
http://www.active-robots.com/products/motorcon/dual-stepper.shtml

http://www.active-robots.com/products/motorcon/sanken-7024m.shtml

http://www.active-robots.com/products/motorcon/easy-step.shtml

stepper motor driver ic's
http://www.allegromicro.com/ic/motor.asp

http://www.futurlec.com/StepperMotorController.shtml


As for the encoders, those are independent of the motors. You can use any encoder with any motor, although encoders are rarely used with steppers for good reason . . .

Charlie1138:
Oh.. shoot.. I think you are right. My printer has 3 motors:

1 for paper feed.. 2 wires (has a rotary encoder)
1 for printer head positioning.. 2 wires (has a linear encoder)
1 for cleaning the printer heads.. this one is a stepper and has 5 wires. (no encoder)

Charlie1138:
This one maybe?

http://www.active-robots.com/products/phidgets/1060-details.shtml

But I don't see anything about encoders...  :-\

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