DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF STEPPER MOTOR CONTROLLER USING THE VHDL TOOL

AIM:
The aim of the project is to design a stepper motor controller using VHDL tools and implement stepper motor
controller in programmable IC PAL/FPGA.
THEORY:
The stepper motor consists of permanent magnet rotor and wound stator. The coils of wound stator are called control
windings. The rotation of stepper motor is controlled by switching ON/OFF the current through control windings. Normally
the control windings are excited through driver transistors. The stepper motor controller generates a sequences of digital data
called switching sequence at a particular clock rate which can be used to switch the transistors that are used to drive the motor.
The controller can be made to generate the switching sequences at variables rate to drive the motor at variable speed. The
direction of rotation of motor can be reversed by generating the switching sequences in reverse order.
HARDWARE:
The hardware of stepper motor controller consists of PAL C22V10/FPGA as stepper motor controller, clock
generator, buffer, SPDT switch to START/STOP and direction control, driver transistors, stepper motor.
START/STOP
CONTROL
SWITCH

DIRECTION
CONTROL
SWITCH

PAL
C22V10 (or)
FPGA

BUFFER

LATCH

STEPPER
MOTOR
DRIVER
TRANSISTOR

STEPPER
MOTOR

CLOCK
GENERATOR

Fig: Block diagram of stepper motor controller

SOFTWARE:
The design and simulation of the stepper motor controller can be performed using Active VHDL. Also the timings of
various signals can be verified. Then the system can be implemented in PAL C22V10 using WARP-R4 or can be implemented
in ALTERA/ATMEL FPGA using MAX PLUS II or in ATMEL FPGA USING IDS 6.0.
NOTE:
In FPGA implementation the following extra features can be provided.
1.

The controller can be programmed to generate switching sequence for half step and full step operation.

2.

The timing (or delay time) between two consecutive switching sequences can be varied in software, to drive
the motor at variable speed.

APPLICATIONS:
The stepper motor are popularly used in
Robots
CD drives
Printers
Type writer
Telex machine