Speed and Direction Control of Stepper Motor

Abstract

In today’s modern world most of industries are reliant on the robotics and advanced motion control mechanisms. Stepping motors providing accurate positioning are used in a variety of fields, including military, medical, and industrial applications. However, not much is known about its historical background and recent advancements; a comprehensive comparison of its types and to other electric motors to provide comprehensive knowledge and clarity in choice of stepping motor implementation for a specific application. The control of stepper motor is usually done manually, which hardly can be embedded in modern enhanced control systems operated via computers. The aim of this thesis is to explore the stepper motors historical background and recent advancements; the comparison of their various types and with other electric motors; design and implementation of a step motor control system which is operated via PC using a simple and efficient Graphical User Interface (GUI) to control its direction & speed accurately. An in-depth literature survey has been done to explore the historical background and recent advancements of step motors and the comparison of them with other electric motors such as servo & DC motors and among its various types. Moreover, a control system circuit and a GUI designed in visual studio software to control the direction & speed of the step motor remotely via a PC is designed and implemented. The main findings of the thesis incudes: a considerable amount of research have been conducted to improve the efficiency, accuracy, costing, performance, and other stepping motors aspects from its first known forms in early 1920s until present day. Stepper motors in comparison to servo and DC motors are less efficient and are not the optimum choice when efficiency is of concern. Hybrid Stepper motors having best performance characteristics is an ideal choice to be applied in most of the motion control applications. Bipolar type of step motors due to their high torque & efficiency are generally better compared to unipolar type. Moreover, based on the control system described and successfully implemented in this thesis utilizing the designed GUI and the hardware components the direction & speed of stepper motor is accurately controlled. Moreover, this study can be further improved by; conducting a more in depth research on the step motors recent advancements covering a wider range of literature also to compare the stepper motors with other electric motors not covered by this thesis work. Furthermore, the designed GUI designed and implemented in this study can be further enhanced adding more control options and the control of several step motors to be further integrated in much more advanced applications.