Hi All,

Been lurking on a few forums for a while before taking the plunge and finally realising how little I know !

Odd, the more you know the more you realise what you don't know...

Anyway, have slowly been getting together a few bits and bobs for fleabay etc to see if I can mash together something resembling a 3 axis cnc rig.

So Arduino in hand, a couple of stepper motors, some H-Bridge L298N driver boards and a 12v power supply, I thought I'd see if I can get some movement out of my steppers. Which is where my problems started, I have to be honest, I did not realise that NEMAxx is a chassis standard (best way I can think of describing how I understand it), so when I saw a couple of NEMA17's on ebay I hit buy it now and happily sat looking at them, realsing I had some significant questions about them, voltage, steps, ampage, deg etc.. So a few hours of t'internetting later, and am not much wiser..

The steppers are 17PM-K112-02W from Minebea.

Regardless of my lack of getting enough knowledge, I hooked one of the badboy's up and did some digging around for some code, 30 mins later, erm.. well, ok, it "sort of" turns.. Heat sink on L298M gets too hot to touch, so have switched it off before I need to replace it !

Is anyone able to point (in simple terms) what I am doing wrong, apart from guesswork and lack of knowledge :)

How do I calculate the voltage of the power supply required ?
How many steps per rotation ?
Anything else I shoudl know that I have not asked ?

To be honest for now, I'd just be happy getting a few motors doing what I want (ideally spinning), as am on a budget so tight it's incredible but am hoping by summer to have something, even if it just draws on paper..

Thanks In Advance

Simon