Stepper motor
When we need precision and repeatability, a stepper motor is always the solution. With the way it is designed, a stepper can only move from one step to the next and fix in that position. A typical motor has 200 steps per revolution; if we tell the motor to go 100 steps in one direction, it will turn exactly 180 degrees. It gets interesting when we only tell it to go one step and it turns exactly 1.8 degrees.
Stepper motors are found in printers, scanners, industrial robot arms, 3D printers, and pretty much in every precision motion device.
There are two types of stepper motors: unipolar and bipolar. Unipolar motors are easier to control while bipolar motors are more powerful.
In this recipe, we will see how to connect a unipolar stepper motor using a common integrated circuit.
Getting ready
The following are the ingredients required to execute this recipe:
An Arduino board connected to a computer via USB.
A breadboard and jumper wires
A unipolar stepper motor.
A ULN2003A or ULN2004...
