page_title: Stepper motor
section_title: Unipolar motors
hierarchical_section_title: Stepper motor / Two-phase stepper motors / Unipolar motors
caption_attribution_description: Unipolar stepper motor windings explained
context_page_description: A stepper motor, also known as step motor or stepping motor, is a brushless DC electric motor that divides a full rotation into a number of equal steps. The motor's position can then be commanded to move and hold at one of these steps without any position sensor for feedback, as long as the motor is carefully sized to the application in respect to torque and speed.
  Switched reluctance motors are very large stepping motors with a reduced pole count, and generally are closed-loop commutated.
context_section_description: A unipolar stepper motor has one winding with center tap per phase. Each section of windings is switched on for each direction of magnetic field. Since in this arrangement a magnetic pole can be reversed without switching the direction of current, the commutation circuit can be made very simple (e.g., a single transistor) for each winding. Typically, given a phase, the center tap of each winding is made common: giving three leads per phase and six leads for a typical two phase motor. Often, these two phase commons are internally joined, so the motor has only five leads.
  A microcontroller or stepper motor controller can be used to activate the drive transistors in the right order, and this ease of operation makes unipolar motors popular with hobbyists; they are probably the cheapest way to get precise angular movements.
  For the experimenter, the windings can be identified by touching the terminal wires together in PM motors. If the terminals of a coil are connected, the shaft becomes harder to turn. One way to distinguish the center tap (common wire) from a coil-end wire is by measuring the resistance. Resistance between common wire and coil-end wire is always half of the resistance between coil-end wires. This is because there is twice the length of coil between the ends and only half from center (common wire) to the end. A quick way to determine if the stepper motor is working is to short circuit every two pairs and try turning the shaft. Whenever a higher than normal resistance is felt, it indicates that the circuit to the particular winding is closed and that the phase is working.
caption: Unipolar stepper motor coils
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