I purchased some six wire stepper motors off of Amazon, and wanted to know about hooking these up correctly. My understanding is that each coil has a common wire, and that wire is not used, thus making it a four wire set up. So you end up with an A-A circuit and a B-B circuit. What I don't know is if polarity matters within each coil circuit? Seems to me if you connect two of the wires together then the stepper motor will not turn and that's kind of key to configuring, but I'm foggy on the rest. It's been about 4+ years since I've messed with this and I don't recall the details on how to determine how to configure correctly. Can somebody help me out here? I'm using the openbuilds controller box fwiw. Here's the spec sheet from the manufacture.
Cant speak to 6 wire motors, but you should check the blackbox doc on how to ID coil wires: docs:blackbox:faq-identify-motor-coils [OpenBuilds Documentation]
I've already identified each coil so that part was easy. I just wasn't sure if there was a polarity consideration, and it doesn't appear there is from 1st glance of the documentation . There still is a B+ and B-, and A+ and A- so there must be something to this. If I'm not mistaken these motors operate by a series of pulses, so power alternates between the A circuit in the B circuit. I do kind of recall the motors could spin in the wrong direction though and then you had to reverse two wires to correct. I'll take a closer look at the documentation again, but if anyone has a better understanding please chime in.
Just need to ID your pairs. You can change motor direction by swapping wires or changing the grbl settings.
I'm assuming when you say swapping wires you mean swapping pairs of wires, as in AA to BB or BB to AA. The order within the pair I don't think matters. Correct?
Reverse the order. Here's an example: docs:blackbox:connect-nema23-reversed-y2 [OpenBuilds Documentation]
Well, that diagram makes it even more confusing! Ha. Not only are they swapping pairs but they are swapping within pair, which makes me assume there is a correct polarity to begin with. I will do a little more research, but I don't think polarity within the pair matters. It's the swapping of the pairs from side to side that is important. So IOW, A+/-A-, B+/B- to B+/B-, A+-/A- If you hooked it up B-/B+ to A-/A+= it wouldn't make a difference, it would still change direction.
In doing some more reading, one person suggested all you need to do is change the polarity of one of the windings or coils. It is not necessary to change all four wires just two. I can say this is what I remember from years ago. You just swapped two wires but I couldn't remember which two. Graphically this start as A+/A- to B+/B- and go to A-/A+ to B+/B- You don't need to swap the pairs from side to side, just one wire within a pair.You could change the B side only as well. If this is wrong somebody please correct me, but this is what I'm understanding you have to do.
post a link to the steppers you have, it will be easier to figure out rather than the back and forth. I have 8 wire motors. They are both uni and bi polar, and can operate in series and parallel, depending on what you want. The 6 wire ones are probably similar in some aspects. But it really would help to know more details about the steppers.
