Stepper Motors

This document is part of a comprehensive tutorial on industrial Digital I/O and Counter/Timer hardware. Learn about National Instruments product offerings for digital and timing I/O, the Industrial Feature Set including watchdog timers and isolation, complementary devices like relays, solenoids and encoders, concepts like sinking and sourcing, and see how these devices can be used in your industrial application.

For more information return to the Complete Industrial Digital I/O and Counter/Timer Tutorial

Introduction to Stepper Motors

A stepper, or stepping motor converts electronic pulses into proportionate mechanical movement. Each revolution of the stepper motor's shaft is made up of a series of discrete individual steps. A step is defined as the angular rotation produced by the output shaft each time the motor receives a step pulse.

Recommended NI Products that Connect to Stepper Motors

For complete stepper motor control we recommend you use our motion control products. However, for basic control of a stepper motor with an integrated drive, our high voltage isolated counter/timer module can be used.

NI 6624

Technical Overview

Stepper motors are very popular in digital control circuits, such as robotics, because they are ideally suited for receiving digital pulses for step control. Each step causes the shaft to rotate a certain number of degrees. A step angle represents the rotation of the output shaft caused by each step, measured in degrees. Stepper motors are used commonly in printers, machine tools, process control systems, disk drives, and programmable controllers.

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