if i run my motors at 400 steps per rev they sound a bit rough, if i run them at 1600 will they sound smoother or will i damage them ?

By rev do you mean step revolutions or shaft revolutions. You cannot damage steppermotors by running them at high revolutions. They will stall if you go above their max threshold, but that wont damage them, it might put a lot of strain on your drivegear though as they will vibrate when they stall. It is better to microstep a stepper, more speed and smoothness. I microstep motors currently at 2400 microsteps per shaft revolution. The step angle is 1.8 deg for the motors. They are reasonably smooth, enough for the application.
Whacko

my spindle has a 4mm pitch so i set my motors to 400 steps to turn the motor saft one full turn so if i alter my drivers to 1600 steps for my spindle to turn once will that make it smoother
thanks

Yes it will, but it also depends on the electronics driving the motors. If the electronics are up to it, it would increase the resolution of the simulated sinewave that drives steppermotors.

Whacko

eh ?? youve lost me there fella, the drivers im using are from motion controle, model number, MSD556,50dc, 5.6A. and the stepper is FL86STH80-4208A-H, THEY ARE WHOPPERS, i just want to speed things up a bit.
thanks

Hey Drut,
    I'm not sure I'm on the same page. Steps per dictates the resolution of your system or I think a better way of putting it is your system dictates steps per. Some drives give you options such as 4-1, 8-1, 10-1 microstepping. Usually, the higher the number of steps per, the smoother it will seem. If all you want to do is speed things up, go to your motor tuning page. If you want to make things smoother and your drives have the option, set it to some sort of micro stepping. Sounds like you are wanting to set it to 4-1. If so, that shouldn't hurt a thing unless you can't get the rapids you desire because the pulse rate will have to be higher than you can produce. I have pasted in an old reply to help.

    Steps per,here is how you do the math. I will give you mine as an example. What we need to know is, How many pulses from Mach will it take to move the machine 1 of your units? (inch,mm) Mine is in inches. 1 inch = 10,000 pulses on mine. This is how I came up with the number.
My steppers have 200 pulses per revolution. ( 360 degrees divided by 1.8 degrees = 200 )
Micro stepping = 10. So 200 X 10=2,000
Motor to screw gearing is 1-1. So 2,000 X 1=2,000
Screw lead is .200 of an inch. My screw will have to turn 5 rounds to move the nut 1". 1.0 divided by 0.200=5. So 2,000 X 5=10,000.

Hope this helps,
Brett

hey drut

just looked at your driver and motor specs and I think what you mean is that you're currently running them at 2 microsteps/real step hence your 400 MICROsteps/rev. So I think you mean you want to try them at 8 microsteps/real step i.e. 1600 microsteps/rev - yes? If so - no problem - you could run them at their max 125 microsteps/real step or 25000 steps/rev if you want to with no fear of damage - mind at Mach3's max default pulse rate (25KHz) that would mean the best you'd get would be 1 rev/sec...

If you do change your microstepping ratio then of course Brett's figures will tell you what to change your "steps per" to in motor tuning but just for quickies sake if you shift from 2 to 8 then you'd change your steps per to 4 times whatever you have it at now to keep things the same.

So... "will you damage them" - No

"will they sound smoother"

Maybe... If the problem is something else then maybe not...

Amen! That sums it up pretty good. Shout if you need more info. There is a lot on the web too. This 'ere is a good un! http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/step/

Whacko for real