Sanyo driver STK672-050

[Konstantin]

Hello everyone.
Iam sure many of us raided copiers in search of steppers and other useful stuff. I have this flea market guy that can supply some unipolar steppers with the driver module attached to the mounting frame, the stepper is a Sanyo Denki StepSyn 3.25A and the driver module is based on a STK672-050. As I ve learned from the driver pdf, its is a microstepping (1/16) driver 3A max and while I am trying to figure out how my particular driver board is configured I would like to know if any of you have experience about this module or similar.

http://www.ortodoxism.ro/datasheets/...STK672-050.pdf

This is a small excerpt from the pdf:

One of five drive types can be selected with the drive mode settings (M1, M2, and M3) —2 phase excitation drive —1-2 phase excitation drive —W1-2 phase excitation drive —2W1-2 phase excitation drive —4W1-2 phase excitation drive • Provides four freely selectable modes for the vector locus during microstepping drive: circular mode, one inside mode, and two outside modes.

My question is if the terms W1-2 or 4W1-2 are meaningful outside Sanyo or those are Sanyo's terms.

Another question: what are the microstepping modes: circular, one inside, and two outside?

This modules use a clock generator to supply the steps and I believe it uses the enable pin to spin it at constant speed and the directional input for the CW/CCW changes, so my idea is to bypass the CLK signal and use Step output from Mach3 to drive it like a regular Step/Dir module.

There is this thing though, from the pdf "CLK Minimum pulse width: 10 μs" makes me wonder if Mach3 will be able to drive it since the "Motor Tuning" in Mach only allows 1-5uS.

Since these modules can be acquired very cheap the temptation for a microstepping module is big.



Thanks.
Konstantin.