Michael.

If you're researching stepper motors in connection to a project you may have, then I suggest you take a serious look at the newer closed-loop motors & drives, so you can be certain of no loss of position.

I found stepperonline to be good.

Martin.

As Martin suggests, closed loop steppers provide a lot of beneficial features. If you search for "integrated closed loop stepper" you will see that there are now quite a few clones of the Leadshine "Integrated Easy Servo" products around now.

For under £100 you get a combined stepper motor, encoder and driver. Just provide the PSU (~36VDC) and the step / direction signals and Bob's your auntie. You can even program parameters such as how many steps error will trigger the "out of position" output and the PID terms through their software GUI thing.

Nice thing about closed loop is that they will recover position within reason. Difficult to see why you would go any other route if you plan to use a stepper rather than a servo.

Murray

For the same reason you don't need traction control on a Nissan Micra?

Neil

Glad you're sorted.

Martin.

We've all got our own bacon to fry and I won't tell you how to do yours. But if you think about it, with a closed loop stepper you don't need such big motors and drivers to be reasonably certain of getting the performance you need. So instead of climbing into a large, crude tractor so you feel certain of getting up the hill, you could do the same job using a Micra with traction control. If you must use that analogy.

Murray

There is no correct orientation. It's probably just decoration.