Stepper Motor Advantages

• Low cost for control achieved
• High torque at startup and low speeds
• Ruggedness
• Simplicity of construction
• Can operate in an open loop control system
• Low maintenance
• Less likely to stall or slip
• Will work in any environment
• Can be used in robotics in a wide scale.
• High reliability
• The rotation angle of the motor is proportional to the input pulse.
• The motor has full torque at standstill (if the windings are energized)
• Precise positioning and repeatability of movement since good stepper motors have an accuracy of 3–5% of a step and this error is non-cumulative from one step to the next.
• Excellent response to starting/stopping/reversing.
• Very reliable since there are no contact brushes in the motor. Therefore, the life of the motor is simply dependent on the life of the bearing.
• The motors response to digital input pulses provides open-loop control, making the motor simpler and less costly to control.
• It is possible to achieve very low-speed synchronous rotation with a load that is directly coupled to the shaft.
• A wide range of rotational speeds can be realized as the speed is proportional to the frequency of the input pulses.

Stepper Motor Applications

• As the stepper motor are digitally controlled using an input pulse, they are suitable for use with computer controlled systems.
• They are used in numeric control of machine tools.
• Used in tape drives, floppy disc drives, printers and electric watches.
• The stepper motor also use in X-Y plotter and robotics.
• It has wide application in textile industries and integrated circuit fabrications.
• The other applications of the Stepper Motor are in spacecrafts launched for scientific explorations of the planets etc.
• These motors also find a variety of commercial, medical and military applications and also used in the production of science fiction movies.
• Stepper motors of microwatts are used in the wrist watches.
• In the machine tool, the stepper motors with ratings of several tens of kilowatts is used.