Newbie- Stepper Motors from a 3 in 1 Printer/Scanner/Copier

[evilad]

Does anyone know how many stepper motors I could salvage from a 3 in 1 printer and what sort of torque they might provide.

By my reckoning there would be at least 2: 1 for the print head and 1 for the scanner. Also I am looking to control them using a driver IC or the existing electronics and an Arduino (PIC microcontroller).

I'm not looking for perfection by any means, just a small 300x300mm rig for anything I can't do by hand.

The idea is to have a platform for X and Y, and then the cutter attached to an overhead Z axis. In this case if I used a high speed cutter and moved the platform slowly, would the torque required be little more than that needed to overcome the friction of the loaded rails.

[vger]

I haven't taken any 3 in 1's apart but scanners I have. The steppers are very small and do not have much power at all. Unless your table is very light weight, say under a pound, you will run into problems. It's not just about the bearings on the axies, it's about inertia. I am almost done with a very small machine where the table moves in one axis. The table is about 125 mm by 200 mm made of 1/4 inch aluminum with 4 1/2 inch linear ball busings and is driven by an 18 inch length of 1/2 10 tpi acme. I would be willing to bet that the small stepper from a scanner would have a hard time turning just the acme rod, much less trying to move the table. Look for a source of larger steppers. Drop by a copy machine repair shop and ask if they have any large old copiers they are junking or throwing out. The mirror carriage drive stepper is usually fair sized.

Steve

[haroldj]

The miror carriage stepper is usually a 5-phase motor.
If you want to find good 2-4phase steppers, look to the older sorters attached to the end of the copiers or better yet, the older doc feeders on top of the machines used 2 or even 3 2-phase steppers at least NEMA 23.

[Lex P]

Does anyone know if the stepper motors used on HP drawing plotters are powerful enouth
to drive a small router, aprox the size of joe's cnc?

[Ozheat]

AFAIK all HP plotters used dc servo motors to do positioning but there is a small stepper that turns the pen storage holder, too small for any cnc use.

[Lex P]

thanks for the advise. I will try and find some older printers as mentioned prevouisly on this thread.
Lex

[JD4x4]

The couple of Epson 3n1's I've disassembled use small servo motors, but I think the HP 1,2, & 3 series laser printer motors I have might be about 100oz or so. There is another thread or two somewhere here with better details about them. I do know that the HP motors are unipolar 1.4 amps per phase and were too big for my flea-powered home-brew driver, so I haven't built anything with them yet, or tested their torque. I plan to rebuild my controller using the SanKen SI-7300A driver ICs that are also in the printer's (one in each printer).

Btw, you can find some good dissection info sometimes in the service manuals here.

[Lex P]

Thanks JD. I will ask a technician friend of mine to be on the look out for some second hand HP motors and Sanken drivers.
Do you have a cnc router that is currently running on printer stepper motors?

[JD4x4]

Originally Posted by Lex P Do you have a cnc router that is currently running on printer stepper motors?

No, I had only been fooling around with small steppers from floppy drives as a learning experience prior to an attempt to add steppers to my Taig lathe. I really haven't made anything practical yet. I think these laserjet steppers may be enough to handle the little Taig lathe and maybe a very small Dremel type mill for drilling & milling PC boards & such, but I'm not sure they would be big enough or fast enough for a useful wood router. But that's just from what I've read on the forums here. I got bummed out about having to re-create my controller board, so I'm slowing down to build in some inevitable expansion this time!

The shafts on the HP motors are machined with spiral gear teeth groves because they mesh straight into a gear train but they are about 6mm in dia. so you should be able to use a coupler with a set screw on them I suppose.

Search around on here for HP printer motors or Minebea Astrosyn 23LM-C701-01 and as I recall you'll find a project or two that have used them.

About the HP/SanKen drivers- they are only good to 48v and 1.7amps so I should really go for bigger amp ICs, but they are "free" with every salvaged printer & I think pin-compatible with other bigger amp sanken ICs so I may use them anyway.

[Lex P]

I sometimes wonder if it is really worth it to play around with the smaller printer motors. One can gear it down to improve the inertia of the machine. I am not really worried if the speed went down. If it takes 2 hours to cut a small job, it will be ok for me. I need to start off with something small and out of that experience, build a bigger machine. New parts from the US are expensive with our exchange rate. This was a quote I got from a supplier on e-bay:
"What you describe on your machine sounds just properly suited for my kit with 3 nema 23 stepper motors of the 282 oz-in size with 3 bipolar drivers. The kit is $300 and includes power supply, voltage control, and computer connectivity. "

[Ozheat]

I have about a dozen laserjet2 stepper motors. I have also sucessfully used the drivers from the printers aswell, although not with any machine. It is pretty easy to interface the driver to a translator as the driver takes A A+ B B+ signals to drive the stepper. The bonus part is that it includes the power supply aswell but at 24v only.

[Lex P]

I suppose it will apply for any make of laserjer2 printers?
Are you talking about the interface board (translator?) between the pc and the stepper motors?