Wiring a nema17/23/32 motor. Finding pairs and coils to connect to the driver

Hello,

Just found an interesting video on how to find out the correct wire pairs coming out of a nema stepper motor. A nema stepper has 4 wires and needs to be connected to the driver in pairs to be able to work properly. A and B coils. To find out which pairs go together you can use a simple led light used on breakout boards. Attach the led light to 2 wires and turn the stepper motor by hand. If the light blinks up you have a correct wire pair and they should go together on coil A or B.

This video explains it perfectly:

You can get the same information simply by shorting the wires together. If they are a pair then the motor gets harder to turn.

This is also the way to work out what _direction_ the pairs are wired in an 8-wire motor.

Incidentally "NEMA" just refers to a set of standard (in the US) motor sizes. In the rest of the world other standards apply for electrical motor sizes (such as ISO) but steppers are nearly always to NEMA dimensions.

andypugh wrote: You can get the same information simply by shorting the wires together. If they are a pair then the motor gets harder to turn.

This is also the way to work out what _direction_ the pairs are wired in an 8-wire motor.

Incidentally "NEMA" just refers to a set of standard (in the US) motor sizes. In the rest of the world other standards apply for electrical motor sizes (such as ISO or IEC) but steppers are nearly always to NEMA dimensions (though often metricated. eg a size 23 might have a 6mm rather than 1/4" shaft)

You can also use a multimeter and measure resistance in Ohms. If the wires are not a pair, then there will be no signal

Or find the data sheet, if the ID is on the motor & data sheet is available.

Ozzyrob wrote: Or find the data sheet, if the ID is on the motor & data sheet is available.

I had some 8-wire motors where the datasheet was wrong. It had one of the 4 windings reversed.

andypugh wrote: I had some 8-wire motors where the datasheet was wrong. It had one of the 4 windings reversed.

Yep that's a good point.