Using a TB6600 Stepper Motor Driver

Ahhh, so much progress has been made on my senior design project since the last time I posted.

We also got the machine to sort marker bands fairly consistently, but we still need to work on the feeding out marker bands one at a time (which I’ll talk about in another post).

TL;DR = Delrin disk wasn’t moving with the NEMA 17 stepper motor, because the motor wasn’t strong enough. So we decided to use a NEMA 23 stepper motor and a TB6600 Stepper Motor Driver. Delrin disk can now move properly.

What I Did

I followed this tutorial to hook up the NEMA 23 Stepper Motor and the TB6600 Stepper Motor Driver: https://www.makerguides.com/tb6600-stepper-motor-driver-arduino-tutorial/

FYI we could no longer use the A4988 stepper motor driver board because it can’t handle the NEMA 23 Stepper Motor, unfortunately. But on the bright side, I was still able to use the code and knowledge from that experience! 😊

Code

Nothing fancy, it’s pretty much the same code as what I did with the NEMA 17 Stepper Motor (with inspiration from “makerguides”). Long story short, this code causes the stepper motor to spin continuously.

// Define stepper motor connections and steps per revolution:
// Make sure external power supply as at least 14 V
#define dirPin 2
#define stepPin 3
#define stepsPerRevolution 1600
void setup() {
  // Declare pins as output:
  pinMode(stepPin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(dirPin, OUTPUT);
}
void loop() {
  // Set the spinning direction clockwise:
  digitalWrite(dirPin, HIGH);
  // Spin the stepper motor 1 revolution slowly:
  for (int i = 0; i < stepsPerRevolution; i++) {
    // These four lines result in 1 step:
    digitalWrite(stepPin, HIGH);
    delayMicroseconds(2000);
    digitalWrite(stepPin, LOW);
    delayMicroseconds(2000);
  }
  //delay(1000); //uncomment this if you need a delay