Introduction to Stepper Motors for 3D Printing - The Basics you probably need to know - Episode 1

Stepper motors! Pretty important for 3d printers, right? But does anyone understand how they work?

Me neither, but armed with a little knowledge and a lot of Wikipedia, and maybe some long nose pliers - we'll get to the bottom of this.
Join me on a 3 part voyage of discovery into what's inside them, what makes them tick (hah), how you drive them, and eventually we'll get on to how you shut them up!

Part one (this part) is about what they are, why they are, and taking them to bits and watching them move. Fascinating.

Any comments please let me know, I'm sure I've missed points, made mistakes on this one, corrections will go here or be picked up in the next episode.

Waste: None. Nothing.
No steppers..okay maybe one stepper was harmed in the making of this video. For science.

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[stefanguiton]

excellent explanation, those close up shots were great

[stevenmcculloch]

Somewhere in this series, can you mention that stepper motors almost never "break"? If it isn't working properly, it is almost always a broken wire, or sometimes a fried driver. I see all the time on reddit people said "my motor wasn't turning properly so I got a new one, but it still isn't working"

[Jessterrr]

I was a bit surprised to learn a few things from this video. I thought that I knew a lot about motors since I used to repair AC and DC drives. TIL that I didn't know much at all about stepper motors and found the presentation interesting. Excellent job keeping it interesting and approachable.

[blaarkies]

8:18 The printer knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or a deviation...

[Reikles]

Such a nice video, i was currently deep diving into the tech of my motors etc. so you helped me out a lot.

[dtaggartofRTD]

It would be a bit more accurate to say the printer has an unreasonable level of confidence that it knows where the print head is regardless of reality. There is no feedback in the act of driving the motor so, if something prevents the motor from stepping, you'll get a layer shift.
Great explanation of how they work.

[Mwwwwwwwwe]

Unrelated -new lifehack! my all metal hotend got badly jammed and I was too lazy to strip it so I turned off the heatsink cooling fan for 2 minutes which softened the filiment in the heatbreak(via heat creep) enough for me to push it through with a piece of wire

[richardhaas]

I installed a lot of stepper motor assemblies back in the early '80's. This technology replaced magnetic particle clutches in highspeed impact printers. Impact printers were replaced by laser printers. The stepper motors were for paper feed. The iron powder in the particle clutches would not always demagnetize, for some reason, and the clutch would seize.

[brunobecher]

Hey this is such a cool and entertaining video. I’m a student working on a stepper/laser project and algorithm gifted me this gem. Excited for next vid!

[richardhaas]

A motor with brushes will self destruct if it spins too fast. Robert Bosch dealt with this by having two shoes on a shaft that went through the rotor shaft. The faster the rotor spun the greater the centrifugal force on the shoes against cylindrical case which in turn limited the RPM's of the starter motor. Cf, the Bosch logo.

Another way is to have a switch in series with the brush circuitry. Centrifugal force will cause the switch to open. This is how a Teletype motor RPM is regulated on board ship where power is unreliable. Calibration was originally done by looking through a slit on a piece of sheet metal welded to a tuning fork at a dot on the motors fan. Later the tuning fork was replaced by a Strobotac from General Radio.

[theoneohmresistor]

youtube recommended me this video, and i must say that you are great

[TheDarvec]

Looking forward to the next video. Great stuff, I'd like to hear your take on voltages to the steppers and why they are different for x, y, z and e. \o

[victortitov]

2:52 "the spinning speed [of brushed motors] reaches a natural equilibrium of voltage vs friction i guess" - it's a bit more interesting and determined. With no friction, the motor spins up to the speed where the voltage it generates equals the supplied voltage. If there is friction, it will slow down, that is mostly because the effective voltage reaching the coils is reduced because now some of it is lost to the resistance of the windings, because now there is current. This is an oversimplification of course, but by compensating that voltage drop, the speed of brushed motors can be fairly accurately controlled. This is how it's done in most cheap audio-cassette decks.

[pizzablender]

"It's all in the nex stepisode"

[alexlux]

i'm curious why the NEMA has 4 cables while the cheap has 5?

[awareaction]

Trinamic druvers can do a dual sensorless endstop detection🤔

[Liquid_Mike]

damn dude, this is an extremely good video!

[nubletten]

After watching this video I knew I had to use the sub button.

[thomasstaubo]

For those wanting to disassemble your own stepper motor because you are curious; do NOT do it, unles it's a junk motor. The magnetism in the rotor will be drastically reduced when you pull it out of the stator.

[LeviathanDPrinting]

Brushless motors can have magnets on the outside or inside. Just depends on what’s the rotor and what’s the stator typically.