a) What is the main use of stepper motors?
In essence, stepper motors are applied in motion-control positioning system. For instance in 3D printers, disk drives, intelligent lighting, scanners, CNC machines, printers, camera lenses, plotters and slot machines.
b) What are the similarities and differences between a reluctance, a permanent magnet and hybrid stepper motors?
The three motors are similar in that, they all have power electronic control that comes with electronic commutation and none of them has windings in the rotor. The mode of operation is what differentiates the three motors. The permanent magnet operates on the basis of the AC motor principle with DC machine characteristics while the reluctance motor operates …show more content…
Since the friction force remains constant on condition that the rotor is unidirectional at all speeds, friction damping type will not result in valuable damping force. If the motor’s load cannot provide adequate viscous mechanical damping, it will run unstable when in “medium speed region”. This is where the back-EMF produced curve has a considerable steep negative slope. In the medium speed range, the back-EMF will increase vibrations (by exponential law) rather than decrease them. Therefore, viscous type damping is obligatory for stepper …show more content…
Typically, the rotor speed is slower than the magnetic field's speed at all times. This lets the rotor bars generate a valuable torque by cutting the magnetic lines of force. Slip is therefore, the variance between the magnetic field’s synchronous speed and the rotating speed of the shaft. As the load increases, the Slip also increases producing more torque. It is quantified in RPM or frequency and expressed as the ratio between the synchronous speed of the magnetic field and the rotation speed of the