American international University-Bangladesh (AIUB)

Faculty of Engineering
Industrial electronics (LAB)

Experiment No. 4: Stepper Motor Control

1. Objective:
This experiment is intended towards familiarization of design and construction of the
controller circuit for stepper motor.
2. Theory:
A stepper motor can be considered as a digital electromechanical device where each step command
pulse results in a movement of the shaft by a discrete angle called step angle of the motor. When a
given number of command pulses are supplied to the motor, shaft will have turned through a known
angle. Therefore, motor can be used to control position by keeping count of the number of command
pulses. Further the average motor speed is proportional to the rate at which the pulse command is
delivered. At low command pulse rate rotor moves in steps, but when the pulse rate is made
sufficiently high, because of the inertia, the rotor moves smoothly, as in the case of dc motors. As the
motor speed is proportional to the rate of command pulses, it can be used for speed control. This type
of motor is ideally suited to open loop position and speed control. Control is simple because neither a
position or a speed sensor, nor feed back loops are required for stepper motors to make output response
to follow input command. Further since command in pulses, motor is compatible to digital systems.
Because of simple control and compatibility with digital systems, the applications of stepper motors
have grown manifold in recent years. Some of the applications are recorder, robotics, textile industry,
printers, tape drives, disk drives, machine tools, process control, integrated circuit fabrication and
electric watches. There are many types of stepper motors. These can be divided in three major
categories, variable reluctance ( single and multi-stack ), permanent magnet and hybrid type.

Schematic Diagram of the reluctance and permanent magnet type stepper motor.

In the commercial stepper motors, the supply is dc and the four semiconductor switches are placed
from four stator windings of the motor to the ground. The switches are periodically turned ON and
OFF to excite the stator windings one after another to rotate the motor in steps. If the frequency of the
ON and OFF operation increases the motor’s speed increase and the motor will apparently run in
continuous rotation.

Signals Required For the Control of a Stepper Motor:

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 A

_
A

_
B

Possible Circuit Diagram for generating the Signal of Stepper Motor Control

5V
SN74194

16 7 Inv A
1 15
A
3 14
Inv B
11 13
12 B
4
5 2
6 10 S1
8 9 S2

Power Circuit of the Stepper Motor Drive:

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3. List of components, instruments and equipments required:

- Dual beam oscilloscope

- Bread board
- IC SN74194
- MOSFET (IRF540) (4 Nos.)

4. Procedure:

1. Study the timing diagram of the waveforms required for the stepper motor control.
2. Observe the four outputs of the circuit SN74194 with oscilloscope and be sure that the proper
waveforms are obtained.
3. Construct the power circuit with MOFETs to run a small size stepper motor.
4. Connect the four signals from the output of the logic circuit to the gate of the MOSFET as shown
in the diagram.
5. Turn the supply ON and set the voltage to 7 or 10V DC as appropriate.
6. Change the frequency of the four gating signal and observe the effect of speed with the increase of
frequency.

Report: For a 4 stator pole and 2 rotor pole PM stepper motor-

• Draw the excitation table
• Timing diagram of different voltages across switch and coil
• Explain the operation in brief for the clockwise maximum step angle rotation.

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