Problem with my stepper motor

I'm having problem with the motor that I bought..I'm very new with these things so I don't know what to do..
I don't know how to connect the 5 pins of my motor to a battery or something..I'm planning to use it as an electricity producer like on electricity produce in pedaling..Its wire is different from the other..it's more like a ribbon than a wire to me..Help me please..and also.. I don't know much about this motor..

Here is the link to the picture..sorry for the bad quality of the picture and for the picture because the end of the wire thing was not captured...I just found it.
[st4.sulitstatic.com]

Edit: I'd just found this on the motor I don't know if this will help
14769070-90
14PM-M204-P2

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/09/2011 08:20AM by Lawrey.

You can't use steppers that way, these things are driven by pulses of energy in sequence to drive them between steps, when rotated by hand they generate similar pulses. If you want to use a motor as a dynamo, you need a DC motor.

I wasn't really able to find any information using those part numbers. Sorry. They do seem to be parts numbers though, so a deeper search may reveal a data sheet for that part with all the information you need.

However, you did mention that it had five wires? If correct you won't be able to use that motor with standard reprap electronics. See the "stepper wiring" page on the wiki.

As for the ribbon cable, there was no picture of the end of the cable, does it have a connector of some sort on it? If it doesn't, you can simple cut a bit between the wires, and then pull them apart for easy access. It looked from the picture like it had a lot more than 5 wires though. Count them?

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I'm building it with Baling Wire

Andrew Smith: You can, sortof. A hand turned stepper will product electricity, but not really in a usable form. More like a non-sine wave low-voltage two-phase AC signal with poor quality, variable period (depends on speed), and variable voltage (depends on speed). It would be very inefficient, and take quite a bit in the way of secondary electronics to clean up to something usable.

Cheaper to spend money on a DC motor, rather than trying to use a stepper. Even finding a DC motor would be easier than finding sufficient electronic bits and pieces to clean up that signal.

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I'm building it with Baling Wire

You need to turn a DC motor quite fast to generate significant power. I have seen a stepper motor used as a dynamo on a wind generator. It has the advantage that you don't need to turn it as fast, so it avoids gearing.

You can just connect the coils to a pair of bridge rectifiers and a smoothing capacitor to give DC. You then have only the varying voltage to cope with, same as any generator.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

There are 5 wires and no connectors at the end..Don't know what to do now..I'm not that good with these and I can't connect those bridge rectifiers and capacitors..

I've searched my house and found something from a broken toy.. there is like a handle outside which you can rotate and inside are magnet,Gears,capatcitor ( I guess) and a motor ( the one that is usually used in toy car like Tamiya and Crush Gear) When I rotate the handle outside the light of the toy lights..The same concept that I want to make..but I don't know how much voltage it produces cause I need a 12V result..

But I still want to use my stepper motor cause I bought it..

One of the five wires will be the common, ignore that one. You can use a multimeter to find which it is if it is not obvious.

Take two bridge rectifiers and wire the DC outputs in parallel to a big capacitor. I.e. both + terminals to the + terminal on the cap and both - terminals to the - on the cap. The cap value isn't critical but you shouldn't exceed its voltage rating. Perhaps try something like 2200uF 25V to start with and see what voltage you get.

Connected each of the other four wires of the stepper to one of the ~ terminals on the bridges. It doesn't matter which goes where.

See how much voltage you get and if it is more than 12V use a regulator to limit it to 12V.

Ideally you want a buck boost switch mode regulator to give 12V efficiently from a wide range of voltages but you could start with a simple linear regulator and see what happens.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Thank you for that detailed instruction I guess I'll give it a shot!

Wish it won't cost a lot..

Edit: In the meantime, all the things that I was able to do is connect the wires (the both end wires) motor to a LED light and it lights up each time I rotate the motor..I now plan to just connect the wires to a cellphone charger instead of the LED light but I'm afraid of the current that it will be producing..what should be the best thing to do so that the whole process will be in order and nothing will be broken..should I use a regulator? Thanks..

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2011 09:41AM by Lawrey.