This is an easy to build stepper motor driver that will allow you to precisely control a unipolar stepper motor

through your computer's parallel port. With a stepper motor you can build a lot of interesting gadgets such as robots, elevator, PCB drilling mill, camera panning system, automatic fish feeder, etc. If you have never worked with stepper motors before you will surely have a lot of fun with this project. How Stepper Motor Works? Stepper motors are very different from a regular DC motors. Instead of spinning like DC motors do, stepper motor steps at a specific resolution for each pulse. The motor that we are using needs 48 steps / pulses just to complete a single revolution! That should be enough to tell about its precision. Another advantage of stepper motors is the fact that their speed of rotation can be achieved almost instantly even if you change the spinning direction. Stepper motor consists of a rotor - the permanent magnet that rotates inside, and stator - four coils (north, east, south, west) that are part of the case, and which don't move. Rotor can be moved by sequentially applying a pulsed DC voltage to one or two coils at a

time.

Stepper Motor Driver

In able to move the rotor you will need a driver. Driver is a circuit that applies a voltage to any of the four stator coils. Driver can be built with IC such as ULN2003 (pictured on the circuit diagram), four darlington transistors or four power transistors such as 2N3055. Stepper Motor Connections

Unipolar motor should have five or six connections depending on the model. If the motor has six connections like the one pictured above, you have to join pins 1 and 2 (red) together and connect them to a (+) 12-24V voltage supply. The remaining pins; a1 (yellow), b1 (black), a2 (orange), b2 (brown) should be connected to a driver (ULN2003) as shown on the schematic.

Stepping Modes There are several stepping modes that you can use to drive the stepper motor. 1. Single Stepping - the simplest mode turns one coil ON at a time. 48 pulses are needed to complete one revolution. Each pulse moves rotor by 7.5 degrees. The following sequence has to be repeated 12 times for motor to complete one revolution.
Pulse 1 2 3 4 Coil a1 ON Coil b1 ON ON ON Coil a2 Coil b2

2. High Torque Stepping - high power / precision mode turns ON two coils on at a time. 48 pulses are needed to complete one revolution. Each pulse moves rotor by 7.5 degrees. The following sequence has to be repeated 12 times for motor to complete one revolution.
Pulse 1 2 3 4 Coil a1 ON Coil b1 ON ON Coil a2 ON ON Coil b2

ON

ON ON

3. Half Stepping - stepping is doubled and motor needs 96 pulses to complete one revolution. Each pulse moves rotor by approximately 3.75 degrees. Notice the mix of single stepping mode (lighter green) and high torque mode (darker green).
Pulse 1 Coil a1 ON Coil b1 Coil a2 Coil b2

2 ON ON 3 ON 4 ON ON 5 ON 6 ON ON 7 ON 8 ON ON - single stepping mode, normal strength, quiet - high torque mode, high strength, slightly louder