Bipolar Stepper Motor (Epson)

[shreifali]

Hi Everbody,
I bought two used Epson Printers for 10$ ! I removed from them too many components.
what I am interested in is the stepper motors. I got 4 motors from them , two motors Epson EM-400 and two EM_402 (4 wires) , and 4 stepper drivers ICs LB11847 0UNB .
I made a search , and I found that the motors are bipolar motors.
my questions are:

can we make a driver board to control these motors for a cnc foam cutter.
if not , can these motors be controlled by the hobbycnc driver board.

my last question is , if these stuff were not useful , what kind of printer components ( hp , canon , samsung , ..???) can have useful components for the cnc foam cutter.

thx a lot

[shreifali]

Hi again,
help plz..
no body had answered yet

[Konstantin]

Do you have pics?
Whats the amperage per phase?
Whats the step in degrees?
Whats the torque?

There are many boards that can drive bipolar. Depends on the specs of your motors.
Konstantin.

[shreifali]

Thanks for replying,
well
I tried to find out the voltage , amperage per phase , torque , steps by degree.. , I found this link

http://www.tnet.com.au/~lion/Electric_Motors.htm
I am not sure if they are the same motors .

two of the ICs used on the board are LB11847 (0UNB) and another IC Epson A3529S .

and I have attached some pictures of the motors .
I hope you will have a better idea .

[Konstantin]

Oh I see.
Well I dont think that the info in Lion Electronics refers to those motors you have, because Lion talks about low amp electric motors to drive a plane´s propellor.

Judging from my experience with printer´s steppers Id say this motor is probably 7.5deg/step, I could be wrong.
If you are willing to do some circuit bending you could trace the motor leads on the PCB and try to find out where is the STEP and DIR inputs, if those exist. Personally I would take a resistor and make a probe with it, one lead connected to GND of the PCB and with the lead you could probe the suspected IC pins while holding the stepper with the other hand to detect movement. If nothing was accomplished I would next do probing but instead of GND I would take the +5V again with a resistor probe. Use a resistor because if you make a short circuit the resistor will limit the current that flows and your PCB will be safer.
If you find the STEP then search for the DIR signal. Connect the probe to a pin in question and pulse on the STEP to see if the direction changes.

I said look for STEP and DIR if those exist, another configuration could be present, namely the 4 phases, like AA BB which use a wave drive, for example a unipolar drive has 4 coils and you must activate the coils in sequence to put the stepper in motion.
1000
0100
0010
0001
I think.
TurboCNC allows you to program this type of wave input for your steppers.

If you are into bending a little bit more, once you find the pins you need you will probably need to disconnect them from the rest of the PCB because when printers power up they execute a routine of movement and checks which you wont want in your project.

I would recommend you to get some 5 1/4 old floppy drives on the flea market and use them to find the STEP/DIR pins where the ribbon cable should connect. You will find em with ease, I did and once I wanted to use them. Its pretty much the cheapest stepper+drive you can find and its easy to experiment.
Low power but fun.

You could go ahead and build some drive boards yourself, our member Pminmo has various designs, I have built the discrete design and the L297 and its not that hard. The discrete design has a lot of information about building and testing and I would recommend it to a beginner. Though you should check if the drive is for bipolar stepper.

All in all, personally I would get some other motors with a little more power and unipolar, just in case, you can always make a 6 lead unipolar into bipolar stepper.

Konstantin.

[hards]

hi all,
I to have epson printer,
and Yes,
we can make a driver board to control these motors for a cnc

[cnc kiwi]

Hi
I have exactly the same motors and driver board as you do, here is the datasheet for the motors:
http://www.shinano.com/xampp/docs/SST41D.pdf
(they're 2.3v, 1A, 1.8 degree step with 1.2kg/cm of holding torque).
The driver chip will need a sequencer to drive the inputs but otherwise it'll probably be okay for these motors, here is the datasheet link:
http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/data...8/LB1847.shtml

Regards
cnc kiwi

[shreifali]

Hi again
I am not sure if Epson EM-400 and EM402 are unipolar or bipolar?

[cnc kiwi]

Hi shreifali
They are definitely bipolar stepper motors, just see the datasheet link I previously mentioned.
cnc kiwi

[shreifali]

thx kiwi for your help
you are right , they are bipolar and
I visted Pminmo.com and there were wonderful drivers and interfaces for bipolar motors.
now I am constructing the miller mechanism and collecting the e-components.
tell u the result later
thx again