Section 2: Stepper Motor Basics

by Daniel Frenkel

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Let's quickly discuss some basic information about stepper motors.

I won’t go too deep here and will mainly cover what needs to be understood later in this course. I recommend watching this quick video below.

The most important thing to note is that the average stepper motor has 200 teeth.

The term "Full Step" means that the motor moves 1 of these 200 steps at a time. If it turns 200 full steps, the motor will have completed 1 full revolution.

The term "Microsteps" is when the motor driver moves a fraction of a full step. The TMC2209 is very advanced and includes a 256 microstep mode. Imagine slicing one of those 200 teeth into 256 small parts. The motor can be made to stop at any of those exact microsteps.

With 256 microsteps, we can divide the motor in 51,200 steps! 

That's because if we have 200 steps, and each step has 256 microsteps, that is 200 x 256 = 51,200!

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