Three driving modes of stepping motor driver

The main difference of stepping motor driver lies in the control accuracy of stepping motor coil current. There are three main driving modes:

1. Subdivision driving mode

Subdivision drive mode has two advantages: low-speed vibration and high positioning accuracy. For stepping motors that need to run at low speed or whose positioning accuracy is less than 0.90 degrees, the subdivision drive mode of stepping motor driver has been widely used.

The working principle is to precisely control the current of two coils of the motor according to sine and cosine steps, so that the distance of one step angle can be divided into several subdivision steps.

2.Whole-step driving mode

In the whole-step driving mode, the same stepping motor can be equipped with either a whole-step driver or a half-step driver, or a subdivision driver, but its running effect is different. The stepper motor driver circularly excites the two coils of the two-phase stepper motor according to the pulse direction instruction. Each pulse of this driving mode will make the motor move by a basic step angle, that is, 1.8 degrees.

3.Half-step driving mode

Compared with the whole-step driving mode, the half-step drive mode has the advantages of double precision and less vibration in low-speed operation, so the half-step driving mode is generally selected when the whole/half-step drive is used in practice.

During single-phase excitation, the rotating shaft of the motor stops at the whole step position. After the driver receives the next pulse, if it excites the other phase and keeps the original excitation state one after another, the rotating shaft of the motor will move by half a step angle and stop between two adjacent whole step positions. In this way, the two-phase coil will be single-phase and then the two-phase excitation stepping motor will rotate in half step of 0.9 degrees per pulse.