I have a brand new Tic500 with a Vexta PX243M-03BA stepper motor that I am pretty sure is OK. It’s a 12V, 0.3A unipolar stepper that I have connected as a bipolar motor. I have Pololu Tic500 Control Center running on a Mac.
Control Center says that I have 12 V on the motor (confirmed with a DMM). I can select Resume, which causes the motor to lock, but not turn, dand Terminate, which causes the motor to spin freely when turned by hand. The red LED is on continuously, yellow is blinking about once per second, and green is blinking much faster than the yellow.
The red LED seems to indicate errors, but Control Center says there aren’t any. Operation State is Normal, Energized No, Homing No, Target None. Everything else seems to be default.
But the motor never steps. What is wrong?
Hello.
If you have not done so already, I highly recommend following the instructions in the “Configuring and testing the stepper motor” section of the Tic user’s guide. It is very important to configure the settings appropriately for your motor, especially the current limit.
It sounds like you might not be telling the Tic to move the motor. After you click “Resume” and the motor energizes, can you try using the “Set target” slider in the “Tic Control Center” to set a new target position? Please note that if you do not have the “Set target when slider or entry box are changed” option enabled, you will need to click the “Set target position” button after moving the slider.
If that still does not move the motor, could you post some pictures of your setup that show all of your connections as well as some screenshots of the “Status” tab of your Tic Control Center while the system is running and the motor is energized (i.e. after you click “Resume”)? Is the red LED still on while the motor is energized? Also, could you post a copy of your Tic settings file? You can save a copy of your settings file from the “File” drop-down menu of the Tic Control Center while the controller is connected.
Brandon
Hi Brandon –
I went through the set up procedure again, and it’s working now. Not sure what the problem was.
Thank you very much.
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