Has anyone tried using a stepper motor as an encoder.

[Nitrus]

Not sure if you will find this site useful or not, but here it is anyway. http://www.4qdtec.com/stpen.html

[lylehaze]

Interesting, but a lot of work (and parts) for an

encoder that won't track slowly.

The encoders at SmashTVs site are a bit more affordable!

Cool though.

LyleHaze

[Screaming_Rabbit]

Not sure if you will find this site useful or not, but here it is anyway. http://www.4qdtec.com/stpen.html

Search the forum, this was heavily discussed about 2 years ago. I think nobody has ever done it.

Greets, Roger

[TheAncientOne]

Done the trick as a tachometer for medium speed. At low speed the stepper produces virtually no output, so the thing 'stalls'.

Good use for an old stepper? A polyphase generator for an LED/Supercap torch. Use the recified outputs to charge a supercap, then a little low power switcher to drive the LED. Never buy another battery! There was an article on how to do this in EPE ocober 2000, (though the design is only in a back issue, not on line).

I resumed interst in this last month when I saw MTE was using old hard disc brushless motors as bearings for his jog wheels. I thought the same, but the output fails at low speed, sadly, and becomes unreliable. Still punting around the idea of using a field in the coil and detecting the flux change, a bit like a modern motor drive inverter does to sense load, but that would get very complex. Still a nice thought though.

Mike