Idle stepper motors
Today I tried to PWM the stepper motors when they are idle. There are several problems with this. First and formost is that any pwm-ing on the steppers results in a high pitched sound that I can’t stand. It’s probably caused by some vibration, so the benefits of lowering the power (reducing heat) is probably offset by the vibration and any wear and tear it may cause.
The second thing I learned is that you can’t interrupt the power of the steppers while they are running. That is, if motor A is moving, then you say, “hold up, lets turn power off because motor B is resting, and we’ll turn A on next time around the loop” then A never does anything. The step cycle is a lot slower than arduino’s loop, so don’t interrupt it. It’s actually doing work while arduino is doing other things. Motor A needs power on while you’re doing crap with B to keep the motor turning. It’s threding, in a way.
Now I’m doing a test with both motors turned off when there is no stepper movement. It’s been running about 15 min. So far the steppers are cool and nothing is out of alignment. Oop, hold on. It looks like a vertical stepper has lost some hight.
Oh yeah, and one SUPER ANNOYING THING I figured out, is that to program the arduino pros, set them to Duelenova 328 in the IDE. DO NOT set them to Arduino Pro/Mini (8mhz)–that will program them for a 8mhz chip, which they are not, and cause your servos to do whatever the fuck they want and not what you want.
