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.

Applications

Computer controlled stepper motors are a type of motion-control positioning system. They are typically digitally controlled as part of an open loop system for use in holding or positioning applications.

In the field of lasers and optics they are frequently used in precision positioning equipment such as linear actuators, linear stages, rotation stages, goniometers, and mirror mounts. Other uses are in packaging machinery, and positioning of valve pilot stages for fluid control systems.

Commercially, stepper motors are used in floppy disk drives, flatbed scanners, computer printers, plotters, image scanners, compact disc drives, intelligent lighting, camera lenses, CNC machines and, more recently, in 3D printers.