Newbie stepper kit

[Neale]

Hi m_c
Thank you for your answer.
If my MPG (Answer to magicniner : A Manual Pulse Generator is a device that is able to start a steppermotor when turned and stop the motor when stopped turning it, via a driver like my M542T as far as I know but maby I am wrong) is a line driver version having 6 terminals as the Tosoku version, and not a version with only 4 terminals, can I then use it with the 0V connected to the drivers PUL- and DIR- and A to PUL+ and B to DIR+.
Will MPG A to driver PUL+, MPG A (with line over) to driver PUL-, on MPG B to driver DIR+, and on MPG B (with a line over) to driver DIR- not work, is that not what they say in the manual for the M542T, there is diagrams for connections to driver with common anode and common catode in the manual but no diagram for line driver,
and then maby have 2 pulse generators, I have seen some that goes from 1hz-10khz with manualy operated start/stop and direction that gives me the x100 and x1000,
theese connected along with my MPG and selected via a switch with 3 settings, step 1 for operating with my MPG, and step 2 for the slow continous speed and step 3 for the high continous speed, so I dont have to learn how to program Arduino.
I uploaded pictures of my items and screenshots of manuals, can you see them ? I cant see them now I think of it. they where visible in the preview.
Kind regards
Steppernewbie

You have a few issues here, and unfortunately we do not have enough information to answer all your questions. I'll start with a few basics, in case you do not know these things already.

The stepper driver has three inputs (two terminals per input). These are step, direction and enable. Ignore "enable" - if you do not connect anything to this, the driver defaults to enabled anyway. The "direction" input does not need pulses. Put 5V across it and the motor will turn in one direction; remove the 5V input and the motor will turn in the other direction. The motor will only turn when pulses are applied to the "step" (or "pul") input. The motor will move one step per pulse, and its direction depends on the "dir" input as described. A standard stepper motor will have 200 steps per revolution so each pulse moves the motor spindle by 1.8 degrees.

You need an MPG that provides a "pulse" output, that is, one pulse per click of the wheel. I'm not sure what the Tosoku MPG output is, but I have seen one reference to "A,B quadrature" output. That suggests to me that the MPG gives a series of pulses on two outputs which are 90deg out of phase. This means that whatever is using the pulses can not only see a pulse train (one step per pulse) but can also work out the direction. Unfortunately, the stepper driver cannot use these signals directly. What you can do, I think, is just connect the A output from the MPG to the Step input on the driver, connect 5V via a switch to the Direction input, and see if that works. The stepper motor will turn in the direction set by the Dir input and will move one step per click of the wheel, but it will not make any difference which way you turn the wheel. Without more information on the MPG outputs, I cannot really say much more than this.

That's the basics. If you can get this working, you will have more-or-less what you wanted. The MPG appears to have a "x1/x10x100" switch, which I guess configures it to deliver one/ten/hundred pulses per click of the wheel, which is also what you want. You can also use the DIP switches on the driver to tell it to use "microsteps" - that is, instead of the 200 steps per rev of a standard motor, these use some clever electronic techniques to simulate more steps per rev. Typically, people use stepper motors with x8 microstepping giving the equivalent of 1600 steps/rev.

With a bit of work, I'm sure that you could put some simple logic circuitry together to take the A and B quadrature outputs from the MPG and turn them into step/dir signals for the stepper, but that's a bit too complicated for me at this time of the morning!