Hello everybody,
For a project which is actually unrelated to robotics I need a stepper motor with 1.8 degree step size. Any advices where to get it? I found Astrosyn motors sold at Farnell for about $41. Are there any better/cheaper choices around?
Thanks.
Oleg.
Hi Oleg,
I don’t know much about stepper motors retailers, but often times you can find a stepper motor that meets your requirements by taking apart old printers.
- Ryan
Old printers are great for a motor here and there, but if you want to get several identical motors, or motors with somewhat known specs for cheap Jameco has a decent selection. Go to “Electromechanical” then “Motors” then “Stepper”. You can sort based on specs from there. The Jameco datasheets aren’t always accurate though, the last stepper motors I purchased claimed to have metric M3x.5 threaded mounting holes, but ended up having 4-40 English (hey, I’m not complaining)!
You can also find an assortment of surplus stepper motors at MPJA here.
SparkFun also carries one tiny stepper motor (recently back in stock) here.
Other than that, it’s surprising what you can find on e-bay!
-Adam
Thanks for the tips on Jameco and MPJA.
MPJA unfortunately does not allow international orders. Otherwise they seem to have a lot of cheap and useful stuff. Perhaps, I’ll check them on one of my trips to the US.
I took apart an old HP Deskjet 970 printer only to find out that it runs on DC motors with external tape encoder. Not totally useless but close to it. I have another yet older version of HP Deskjet 930: I guess it also runs on DC. I am more hopeful about Xerox Phaser 3130 which is also around: I’ll check it out.
Thanks again.
Oleg.