Quick Stepper Wiring Q

[kawazuki]

Just a quickie... 8 wire stepper being run parallel configuration - would you run each phase wire up to the driver then combine into the 4 required or splice close to motor and run the resulting 4 back to driver? Cable / wire length will be about 2m overall.

[irving2008]

Originally Posted by kawazuki Just a quickie... 8 wire stepper being run parallel configuration - would you run each phase wire up to the driver then combine into the 4 required or splice close to motor and run the resulting 4 back to driver? Cable / wire length will be about 2m overall.

Not sure I can see why it makes a lot of difference. If you don't have heavy enough wire to hand to effectively handle the current in 2 parallel phases then clearly wire each phase back to the driver, but there's a risk that if a wire drops off/breaks/etc., you could damage the remaining phase as the current limit will be too high for a single coil (assuming a chopper current limiter). Personally I'd wire them together at the motor end as its less wiring effort and neater/tidier.