Construction operation and basic

control of VR, PM and hybrid type

Stepper motors

Name : K.M.G.Y.Sewwandi

Index No : 120608P

Date of sub : 30/10/2015

 Permanent Magnet (PM) type stepper motors
 Construction
When consider about the construction permanent magnet stepper motor, it can sub divide into
several major parts. Those are Winding, Mounting Plate, Permanent magnet rotor, stator,
bushings and bearings connector and wire leads.

Stator section of the Permanent

magnet stepper motor consist of coils,
stator yoke, in and out terminals and
stators molded together in one piece
by plastic resin. The permanent-
magnet stepping motor has a similar
stator construction to the single-stack
variable-reluctance type.

In the PM type the rotor is not toothed and permanent magnets are added to the rotor structure,
that means composed of permanent magnet material. Instead the rotor is magnetized with
alternating north and south poles situated in a straight line parallel to the rotor shaft.

 Operation
Below figure shows PM type rotor which has two magnetic poles which align with two of the
stator teeth. This alignment is done according to the winding excitation.

It produces a step of 90 for a change in excitation between

the two windings. The current polarity is a very important
factor in the permanent-magnet motor. For positive
current in winding A, the rotor position illustrated in the
picture, a switch to positive current in winding B would
produce a clockwise step, and negative excitation of B
would give anticlockwise rotation. Therefore the step-
angle is 90o. That is how the rotation is happening.

 Basic Control
When DC current is applied to the stator winding, the rotor will received the required torque
and it will be line up with the stator field. The stepper motor should have the ability to
maintain the holding torque (torque required to move the rotor one full step with the stator
energized) indefinitely when the rotor is stopped. There is a small magnetic force developed
between the permanent magnet and the stator when the power is not applied to the stator
windings. This is called detent torque or residual torque.

The speed and the direction of the permanent magnet stepper motor can be changed by
changing the pulse sequence to the stator coils in a desired manner. This sequence of positive
and negative pulses causes the motor shaft to rotate counterclockwise in 90° steps. When
motor is made to rotate counterclockwise at 45° intervals, the pulses should be arranged to an
appropriate manner.
 Variable Reluctance (VR) type stepper motors
 Construction
In variable reluctance type stepper motors the rotor has both teeth and slots, and also it is made
by using soft iron (Permanent Magnet is replaced by soft Iron) . Therefore we can say the motor
has soft iron multi-toothed rotor. And also the motor has
a wound stator. The stator is consisted of a magnetic
core and this core is constructed with a stack of steel
laminations.

The stator consist of multiple salient electromagnet poles

and the rotor has multiple projections acting as saliant
magnetic ples.
In switched relactance motors the number of rotor poles is
lesser than the number of stator poles.

 Operation
When a rotor pole is in a position such that, the distance from two adjacent stator poles are same,
that pole position is called as fully unaligned position. In this position magnetic reluctance for
the pole is maximum. At the position which two or more stator poles are fully aligned with the
rotor poles the reluctance become minimum. When the stator is energized the direction of rotor
torque will be created in a way that minimize reluctance. So the rotor pole is moved to the
aligned position from unaligned position. To continue the rotation the stator field should be
rotated in a proper manner.
The step length can be simply expressed in terms of the numbers of phases and rotor teeth. For
an N-phase, motor excitation of each phase in sequence produces N steps of rotor motion and at
the end of these N steps excitation returns to the original set of stator teeth. The rotor teeth are
once again aligned with these stator teeth, except that the rotor has moved a rotor tooth pitch. For
a machine with p rotor teeth,

The tooth pitch = (360/p)

corresponding to a movement of N steps, so step length = (360/Np)

For an example if there are three phases and four rotor teeth , it gives a step length of 30◦.

The rotor step length is 30° in below figure. The position of the rotor when phase A is energized
is shown in figure (a) and as long as phase A is energized, the rotor will be held stationary. After
the phase A is switched off and phase B is energized, the rotor will turn 30° until two poles of
the rotor are aligned under the north and south poles established by phase B. Likewise the step
sequence is carried out. By repeating the switching pattern the motor will rotate in the direction.
When reverse the pattern the rotating direction of the motor can be changed.
 Basic control
Since the rotor is made by using soft iron, no residual torque to hold the rotor at one position
when turned off.
Both position and the direction can control here. The Position control of the motor is done
by changing the switching sequence it and by changing the speed of the switching sequence
it can be controlled the speed of the motor.

Variable Reluctance (VR) type stepper motors

 Construction
We can introduce this structure as doubly salient structure, this motor consists of two pieces
of soft iron. The excitation of the magnetic circuit is happened by sing a permanent magnet and
windings and called the structure as hybrid structure. The permanent magnet is mounted on rotor
and windings are placed on stator poles. The
windings are also used to encourage or
discourage the flow of magnet flux through
certain poles according to the rotor position
required. Also the motor is axially magnetized.
The counterpart of the stator core structure is
very similar to the Variable Reactance type
stepper motor. But there is a significant
difference between those two motors. That is
only one of the two coils of one phase is wound
on one pole in VR motor and in Hybrid motor
coils of two different phases wound on one the
same pole. The configuration is called a bifilar
connection. There are uniformly spaced teeth in
the structure and those are used to cover the
poles of the hybrid motor. The teeth are made from soft steel.
 Operation
According to the above picture there are eight stator poles and each pole has between two
and six teeth. As I said before, the stator poles are also provided with windings (used to
encourage or discourage the flow of magnet flux through certain poles according to the rotor
position required). Since two windings are provided, those two winding is situated on four
stator poles. According to the picture the winding called as A is placed on poles 1, 3, 5, 7 and
the winding called as B is on poles 2, 4, 6, 8. When the winding A is excited by positive current
the resultant magnetic field is directed radially outward in poles 3 and 7, but radially inward in
poles 1 and 5. This phenomena is happened because the successive poles of each phase are
wound in the opposite sense. This phenomena is same for phase B also.

 Basic control
In the hybrid motor the torque is created by the interaction of the magnetic field of the
permanent magnet and the magnetic field produced by the stator. The stepping rate (number of
steps per second) and step-angle is the parameters of actual speed of a stepper motor.

The rotation direction can be controlled by applying the pulses to either the clockwise or
counterclockwise drive circuits. These Stepping motors are normally not operated with
feedback controllers.

There are several types of torques are involved in the controller operation. Detent torque is one
of such torque. This is the maximum external torque that the motor can restrain in stationary
conditions in the non-energized state. When one phase energized with rated phase current, there
is a limit for the maximum external torque that the motor can restrain in stationary conditions,
that is called holding torque. According to the moving conditions of the rotor there should be a
maximum external torque that the motor can restrain while rotating at a given pulse rate without
losing synchronism. That torque(pullout torque) should be controlled in the limits.

The pulse rate should also controlled in the limits such as Start rate and stop rate in order to gain
a proper operation.