warning: don't buy cheap motors for your reprap!

I purchased these cheap motors from a company called "Wantai Motor" of ebay a couple of months ago [www.ebay.com]
and I have been having problems with them since the beginning.

• They cannot microstep (they just start vibrating)
• they make a ton of noise
• after about 50 continuous rotations, they begin to stutter and have to be powered off for about ten seconds before they can be used again.

I have been trying to wrangle these motors for a month now, and just switched over to better motors with much better results. Stay away from these!

Model #?

I've used Wantai steppers for 3+ months now with zero issues.

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- akhlut

Just remember - Iterate, Iterate, Iterate!

[myhomelessmind.blogspot.com]

Its in the link: 42BYGHW609. Maybe I just received a bad batch?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2012 11:26PM by peqo.

Personally running 42BYGHM809's. They all work like champs.

Looking at the specs, they don't seem so different. I bet nophead has an idea about why they don't work. Have you metered out the leads and have the steppers connected correctly?

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- akhlut

Just remember - Iterate, Iterate, Iterate!

[myhomelessmind.blogspot.com]

Hi guys,

Just a thought maybe there is too much/too little amps to the motors.

What set-up do you have? How fast are you running them?

If you run them too fast (i mean a realy realy super uber fast) they will make heaps of noise and vibrate.
If you run too many amps the same thing will happen.

I havn't used these stepper motors but i find it hard to belive that all of them are not working (maybe check by plugging the x into y (will show if it is the stepped driver e.t.c.)).

Cheers,

Muffin

The specs certainly look OK. The fact they stop after 50 rotations sounds like the driver is getting too hot and shutting down. I.e. the current is set too high.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Quote

• They cannot microstep (they just start vibrating)

Every stepper motor can microstep. Microstepping is a feature of the stepper driver, not of the motor.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

I was running them at 1.1 A, with heatsinks on the drivers and fans. I tried switching drivers, switching ports on the motors. When I got a new motor, I simply unplugged it and plugged in a new one, which worked straight away with no changes. Definitely wasn't from overheating, it didn't just stop and start again, it was more like vibrating.

Sounds your acceleration or speed settings are too high for them.

@pego
play with the trimmpot of your drivers, in case you are in doubt with the drivers, borrow some from a friend and compare the performance.

which driver are u using?

i heard from many people only good things about those wantai you mentioned, one guy got really bad batch one time, but overall i heard just positive feedback on this company.


Regards,
Razvan
www.reprapdiscount.com

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/23/2012 11:31AM by reprapdiscount.

I have the same motors as the OP, I will update with my results after I build my Prusa. Hoping he was just unlucky.

I also purchased Wantai 609s for the smaller loads (x, y, z), and the extruder gets an 809 for the increased torque. Granted, they're all sitting on a shelf until I find time to build my printer, delayed again by life's other responsibilities... I've breadboard tested them all though, and they all seem to work just fine, although they do seem to have a tendency to lock up rather easily if pushed to fast, but I suspect that's the pololus and their incredibly sloppy, electrically non-isolated current-limit trimpots more than anything else. Shame they haven't replaced the open frame pots with a closed frame design like they show on their company webpage...a bit deceptive in my opinion.

Check your current limit, as you may either be driving too hard or not hard enough.

I bench tested my full assembly of electronics and motors tonight. I am having no issues driving the 609s with a Vref of 280mv, so I'm somewhere well under half of the motors 1.7a rating and they still seem to have plenty of torque. So far everything is looking good with these little motors.

I just tested 5 of the Wantai motors and all tested fine. Test bed was an Uno R3 with an oddwires L298N stepper board using code from Tom Igoe's stepper driver and lib example. One motor Iet run overnight with no problems. It's a nice little setup to learn about steppers and how to program them.

I'm received Wantai Motor 42BYGHW609 on august 2012. That's work good!
May be you need setup jumpers for microstepping on your board? Motors can't work without jumpers.

Ok, so in the end I can confirm my Wantai 42BYGHW609s are fine indeed. No issues. I am very pleased.

I have all of my cheap pololu driver's vrefs around 270mv or less, with the exception of the extruder motor which is about 350mv, it gets warm, but not warm enough to soften my PLA parts.

Ran a 7 hour print last night, the motors were all within normal temp ranges, and while being a little noisy they certainly did not have any problems.

I am a happy customer and will return to them for more in the future.

Hi,
I have been Building an experimental project for over twelve months now.
For 11 months persevering with quite a number and models of Wantia motors.

1) My experience over about 20 motors, has shown a 25% failure rate.
2) The are very slow (RPM) in comparision with other quality motors
3) Company customer service is very difficult and getting answers when a problem is almost impossible.
4) They cheap, but as we all know, that can very often turn out a lot more that if you bought quality.

In a CNC machine you need to have the largest RPM range available for tranverse and feed speeds, with Wantia imited operating range limits your the range to just a few hundred Revs.
When remembering you have no return (because of the cost of return postage) it's very much BUYER BEWARE

Summary: My advice is not to purchaseWantia motors.
Don’t waste your hard earned money.

Me too but no they are acting up my y motor is not working

Wantai motors are superb. Mine are just 56 oz-in including the extruder motor and get barely warm even after hours of printing. Peqo obviously has an unrelated motor problem.

I found out my problem my Drivers are Fried I am Ordering new Drivers I cross connected the Motors to the Extruder driver and the Motor Moved... so Some of the Drivers are Fried and Maybe I have a corrupted Version of Arduino Down-loader it seems to work fine on my Older laptop.... but not on the More Powerful new one... So I will use the Old one for my 3D printer.

Hey check the wiring connection it will vibrate if one of the wire is cutoff !

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Enjoy life

Vegasloki- I've been struggling with a Wantai 42BYGHW609 Stepper and a Sunpec L298N controller, both bought from Oddwires, and I ran across your post here from 2 years ago. It sounds like you might have been working with the same hardware I've been trying to get working. I was wondering if you might remember any specifics of the setup you used when you got things working- it seems like I've tried every variation of wiring, power supply, and code but I haven't gotten much but varying levels of jittery, low-torque motion (like, light contact with a finger is enough to stop it from turning). I'm using the code from Tom Igoe's post you linked to, and what seemed like a logical wiring was

Out1 - Black
Out2 - Green
Out3 - Red
Out4 - Blue

although I think I've tried every variation, everything else seems about the same or worse. I've tried 9V 1A and 12V 2A power supplies, I've tried removing the jumpers from ENA and ENB and replacing them with wires to the arduino's +5V (that seemed to help a bit).

Might you know what worked for you? This is driving me nuts... Do I just have a bad motor?

You may just have a bad motor. For the wiring you can meter the leads and see which leads are which. A pair will show continuity with a slight resistance. I haven't used the standalone test rig in over a year, I setup a RAMPS rig to test motors. That UNO is now a reflow oven. ;-) Wish I could be more help.

In doubt, wire colors are unreliable. Also see [www.reprap.org]

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Yeah, I tested the wires with the ohm-meter and I definitely have the right pairs. They seem to match what is shown on Wantai's site.

So, from that wiki, having which coil is A and which is B reversed or having the polarity of a coil reversed should only affect the direction of the movement and shouldn't be the cause of the jittery-ness, right?

So I thought maybe it's the speed I'm using for setSpeed()... I tried the code here to no avail, either...

I've got 2 of each of these drivers and motors, and neither works so far. I'll keep fiddling with it a little while longer, I guess...