steven_first
New Member
Hello all. I have a quick question that Google is having trouble helping me with so I figured I would ask here. I have a few DLP color wheels that I have been playing around with recently but I am having trouble driving them. They are all 4 wire stepper motors with one common and 3 coils all connected to the common (guess that is why they call it common!). Any way, I have been using a simple BS2 code to run the motor while using ULN2803 Darlington pair IC to supply the current to drive the motor. This works ok I guess. I have to push the motor to get it started and I am very limited in the RPM I can get to. I was suspecting that it was because of the slowness of the ULN2803 but I am not sure. I have tried to find info on drivers for this type of stepper but all I find is 6 wire and 4 wire dual coil stepper drivers. I guess my questions are these: Why do I have to push my motor to get it started? If I don’t it just jitters and even after I push it, it will sometimes end up spinning backwards. Why can’t I get any higher RPM’s out of this thing, I am maybe getting 750 to 1200 at best; any faster pulses and it won’t spin. And lastly, where can I find a proper driver IC or board for this type of motor? Here is a copy of my amazingly complex program to; it is set as fast as I can drive the stepper. The ‘pls’ is something I was just playing around with to experiment with delay between coils.
pls VAR Word
npls VAR Word
pls = 1
npls = 10
'main
DO
HIGH 0
PAUSE npls
LOW 0
PAUSE pls
HIGH 1
PAUSE npls
LOW 1
PAUSE pls
HIGH 2
PAUSE npls
LOW 2
PAUSE pls
LOOP
END
pls VAR Word
npls VAR Word
pls = 1
npls = 10
'main
DO
HIGH 0
PAUSE npls
LOW 0
PAUSE pls
HIGH 1
PAUSE npls
LOW 1
PAUSE pls
HIGH 2
PAUSE npls
LOW 2
PAUSE pls
LOOP
END