You will need a power supply cost about £15 and something with a description like Reversible Stepper Motor Speed Regulator with a cost of about £20. You should be able to find wiring details for stepper motors on line that match yours, they have pretty standard wiring colours.

Martin C

Apologies, cant for the life of me post embedded video, old age.

Dave, if it has 8 wires it is probably a 2-phase hybrid stepper with 2 sets of windings. Each phase can use 2 windings, connected in series or parallel for different combinations of maximum speed or torque. The 3.1A is the maximum current, not that that is very relevant as long as you keep below it.

My album shows my mill power feed. To drive the motor you will need a controller to generate pulses, and a driver to actually apply current to the motor. I use an Arduino for the first, using an App on my phone as the user interface, connected by Bluetooth. Most of the functionality comes from free CNC software called GRBL, widely used to run 3D printers but also CNC mills and routers. Not using much of its capability for a power feed but easier than rolling your own. The Arduino has a CNC "shield" that carries the actual stepper drivers – it can support up to 4 drivers for 3 axes. There is also a 24V/5V PSU. So I run the stepper from 24V at 1 amp via the driver which gives plenty of power for my VMB X axis.

Since taking those pics I have added an extra driver so I now have a 2-axis controller, which actually I did so I could run a coil winding machine. But it also means that I can run a dividing head controlled by the same Arduino rather than a separate control box. This is convenient and also means that things like helical milling become possible.

Happy to give more information if this might be of interest.

They don't need 3.1 amps, that is the maximum! My X axis motor is rated at something like that but generates plenty of torque at 1 amp. I use DRV8825 drivers on the CNC shield, these are rated at 1.5 amps/phase at up to 45 V, or 2.2 A with more cooling. See **LINK** My converted Myford dividing head also runs at 1A and again has plenty of torque.

Correct, GRBL doesn't have a control panel, you just send it g-code via a serial link. It does have loads of other useful functions though such as managing acceleration, soft limits, and coordinated motion if you want to say do spiral milling – and it's free! As I said, for controlling it I use my phone with an app called grbl controller which is also free and has a control panel:

Basically I do most "power feeding" just using the jog functions.

We covered this simple stepper drive requirement only a few weeks ago when I think someone asked about a driver board which looks very like the driver board featured featured in the video Daggers linked. I think that thread had referred to a video by one of the well known bloggers like Myfordboy or Boubleboost.

They don't need 3.1 amps, that is the maximum!

It will need 3.1 amps to develope it's rated holding torque, though – you can run below this if you can manage with the reduced torque that will result.

I have had a play with a couple of the cheap Ebay drives (can't seem to get Ebay up at the moment to confirm which ) variously described as "TB6600" after a Toshibe drive ic. Some are TB6600, some are not !

Most listings give the absolute maximum ratings, as opposed to recommended absolute operating conditions. Both worked, but both had resonance issues at various speeds using either a 24v or 36v power supply (depending upon drive rating) – the one that has a TB6600 (or clone – same ic package) performs better. A more expensive Stepper Online digital drive is much quieter in operation and does not appear to have the resonance problems of the cheapies – as ever, you get what you pay for.

"Testing" here being with hand held motors not driving any load & the input pulses being generated by an Ebay step/direction generator.

Nigel B.