Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Story of Stepper Motor

What is the stepper motor? How it works? Can an electrical engineer answer me? Yes, but very few. I found it interestingly last month when I had to teach the concept of stepper motor to the students of second year Information technology.

In the subject of microprocessor the interfacing of the stepper motor with programmable peripheral interface is there to teach. I have learned this concept in subject ‘electrical machines’ when I was studying in third year computer engineering. I did not perform any practical with this stepper motor. Most of the time we think in this way; when the subject is not relevant to our core branch. It happened to me when I was studying in engineering. I was knowing the concept of stepper motor but was unknown with the actual working of it. In order to teach this concept to the students I referred many of the books of the subject ‘Electrical Machines’. I got working organization of the motor in almost all of the books. But at actual the working of the motor with computer interfacing was not given. I was desperately searching to learn this concept. But I could not find this concept in any of the books. I referred a dozen PowerPoint presentations for the same purpose. But I failed in the same.

Finally, I approached a person who pursued his diploma in electrical engineering and had an experience of more than 10 years as a technical assistant. He was knowing only the working of the stepper motor theoretically. I have already got this in many of the electrical machines’ books. The person was not knowing how to interface the motor with computer? He even did not know where actually the motor is used in computer…! He heard the term ‘excitation code’ of stepper motor for the first time and that’s from me…! I surprised the see that a diploma holder of electrical did not know the concept of working of a general motor then how can we expect this from the students of information technology stream? In the lab manual designed by local publications the program was given but how actually works; was not given. After all this my willingness of understanding the working of this motor had grown up and I decided to go in root of it.

I was not having any stepper motor to see and open it. In college, the stepper motor was new and it was not possible to open it…! I surfed through the internet and finally I got a good PowerPoint presentation created by a student named Ali Abdul Jalel for his project. In this presentation, he illustrated the working of stepper motor with all the excitation codes. After reading this, I took a breath of relief.
There is always a solution of the problem but we must have desperate willingness and effort to find the solution. This always increases the ability to go in the root of the solution.

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