Low-cost controller for multi-axes stepper motors

Power integrated circuit controller/driver-based multi-axes stepper motors areextensively used in industry and other market sectors. Previously suggested techniques and existing commercially available full circuit controller boards employ complete set of commercially available driver/controller chips for each stepper motor. This paper describes how it is possible, to use a single controller chip and multi-driver chips to design a controller for simultaneous and independent control of multi-axes stepper motors. The controller circuit is supported with multi-task and efficient algorithms. The proposed controller circuit surpasses the existing controller boards in terms of its lower power consumption, low cost, and compact size. The software developed and the hardware testing were done using the EV87C51 FB Development System Board with the Orental stepper motor PH264-0213.