I'm playing with two stepper motors from an old printer. Each motor is 6-wire, unipolar and about 1.5" dia. Motor 1 moves the printer head, has 40 ohms from center tap to winding end, and I counted 48 steps. Motor 2 turns 34 times to rotate the paper feed cylinder one turn. It has 50 ohms and the steps were so fine I couldn't count them. They're made by Seikosha and I couldn't find any info from the web. Whats a good estimate to the max voltage and current? Also I assume they're not the greastest quaility so whats a safe max step rate to operate at (dont want it to fly apart)? I also plan on getting a kit based on the Allegro 5804 chip to drive them with.

Years ago I earned an Engineering Science degree (that I never used) but I had very little electronics. Last year I took some classes in electronics and PLC's but this year I'm self studying on digital and micros. So this is not homework or some special project. I saw that Matt Bucknall and Steve Taylor have articles on the steppers. I'll appreciate any article or any assembler CODE that that the Guru's will send me. drive_1305@hotmail.com