Weld positioner help

[Mattyjt]

Hi everyone I’m new here and new to the cnc building diy.
So I’m planning on making a weld positioner basically a single axis rotary table
I’ve decided to go for a stepper motor as more precise over a standard dc motor.
So my thing is I need the motor to have an adjustable speed from 0 to roughly 10rpm. Ideally I would like a little lcd display showing what rpm the motor is running although not essential. Would also need a forward and reverse and a stop/pause.
I’ve looked into it and a lot of people are coming up with running Arduino. So not only am I new to stepper motors etc I have no clue about programming. I’ve added a few things to my shopping list which include stepper motor, power supply, I’ve also found a stepper motor drive controller. Would using this controller with speed adjust forward and reverse get rid of the having to programme a driver or have I got all this totally wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

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[spumco]

I don't know what the 'drive controller' is you mentioned, but you're mostly on the right track. To make a stepper motor move, you need

Motor
Drive
Power supply
Controller

The drive is the device that takes voltage from the power supply and connects to the coils in the motor. The drive usually takes step and direction input signals, but the drive is 'dumb'. You can't do anything with it without some other device that sends S&D signals to it.

The device that creates signals for the drive to use is the controller. This is where folks are discussing using an Arduino... the arduino can be connected to the drive inputs and programmed to output signals that the drive can use to move the motor. The arduino can also be programmed to change the signals to the drive depending on inputs to the arduino (direction switch, run/stop switch, direction switch, speed knob, ect.)

There are also stand-alone stepper drive controllers on amazon/ebay which do not need real programming. For your purposes those would be the ticket - you can stop/start, run continuous or jog, change direction, change speed. Just hook up switches to the controller and a power supply (they need some sort of voltage, like 5 or 12 or 24vdc) and it will output signals to the stepper drive.

If you want the RPM display, then the arduino or some other similar microcontroller is what you need - it can also output to a display the RPM (assuming you programmed it that way).

If programming an arduino sounds intimidating, there is a PLC (programmable logic controller) which is very inexpensive and uses an easier to understand programming environment. Velocio Ace is the name of it, and they have easy to understand graphical programming for controlling stepper motors (and other stuff). Decent videos on how to get started, too. The Velocio is more expensive than the cheaper arduinos and the other controller, but they're still pretty cheap.