Finding the Best NEMA17 Stepper Motor: LDO Motors, STEPPERONLINE and more tested with a dynamometer 

Awesome dyno tester man!!! I love it. To really see the super power shining, give them 48v and 2.4amp+ 😊. Instant sub for me!!

Great video and dyno. The TMC2209 can blow up because you have no bulk capacitance on your test board. You could also add a 24V TVS in parallel as a safety mechanism. As other commenter mentioned, adding inductance to the spec table would give us a hint as to the high speed performance. LDO-42STH48-2504AC = 1.5mH LDO-42STH48-2804AC = 0.6mH Stepperonline = 2.4mH usongshine = 3.2mH jk42hs48-1684-08af = 2.8mH Its a trade off, so if you want speed you just choose a low inductance model. Doesn't need to be some fancy 3d printer brand. That and always use 24V or even 48V if possible.

Those flat spots at the beginning of the torque-speed curves are due to the current limit on the drivers. The torque is proportional to the current. Once the motor speeds up there is less time to build up current before switching direction of current flow which is why the current drops at higher speeds as well as torque. This is why higher voltage systems are beneficial because they can build up the same amount of current in less time. This allows for a longer flat spot in the torque-speed curves

Wow! Very in depth testing. Thank you for your service to the community. Look forward to more motor testing and would love to see some fan testing as well!

Fascinating results, thanks! Your testing setup and machine is fantastic.

Very in-depth and quality explanation! I've wondered about real world testing on this for quite some time.

Good test. You will not be disappointed with the 5160. I used 2208 (Creative board), 2130 and 5160 (BTT OCTOPUS) on an Ender 5 PRO and a 5 PLUS modified with linear rail and with StepperOnline like the ones in your test. I have not measured the torque but the reliable maximum speed results are visible: if 2208 are 100%, 2130 are 150% (bit of whine at low speed) and 5160 are 170%. Now with all 5160 the loudest things are the PSU and cooling fans.

Awesome work. Appreciate your efforts to investigate and show the true torque capabilities across all he speed range

Excellent work! Thanks for sharing! :)

Great job and very interesting results! I was surprised to see how much of a difference thr stepper controllers made.

First time on this chan. This is a SERIOUS chan with the testing! I love it!

Nice video and results! Your TMC2209 drivers probably died because you weren’t using a capacitor between your 12V input line and ground before your driver. I used a 220uF capacitor without I single driver dying since.

Great analysis! Subscribed for more driver tests.

Great video! Now I have to watch your other ones too. Thanks

I love thorough, informative, testing

Oooh... I know you will get lots of requests to add motors or models, or tests, but I like to think I have a decent reason to ask for another motor to be tested in a similar fashion: the Moons motor that comes in (for example) the Formbot kits, and is available on the Biqu site. That is also a pretty popular and common motor 'in the field' and I would love to know how it stacks up in actual 'accurate tests' against the LDO motors. I've got both on printers, but those are quite different in setup so I find it hard to compare the two. And I wonder if I should swap out the Moons for the LDOs, or vice versa (or simply stick with what I have since they are roughly comparable...).

Great video! I'd just warn you, when using TMC5160 drivers in the future, to not use them above 24 V if using it in the stepstick form factor. The design pioneered by Watterott and copied by other manufacturers have a design flaw that makes them burn randomly, as many Voron owners that run their stepper motors at 48 V have discovered. Some manufacturers, like Bigtreetech and Mellow, have designed a stand alone board using this driver that correct these flaws, but they need to be connected to 3d printer boards using adapter cables. Also, I'd like to suggest including the OMC 17HS19-2504S-H stepper motor in the test, they are also rated at 2.5 A and are said to be similar or slightly better than the LDO Speedy Power ones. The only drawback is that this motor is only available in the version with wires coming out directly from its body, instead of having a connector as all the other motors tested.

The dyno you built is fantastic! What a great idea!

Great results! I'd love to see some "bottom of the barrel generic" motors tested, like the ones you get in GRBL combo kits, just to see how much performance you can get by investing in higher quality motors.

Top work, this is really useful testing! Thanks for putting it together. Looking forward to seeing the tmc5160 data. It would also have been interesting to see how your torque speed curves compare to the ones in the datasheets for each of these motors (stepperonline have t/s curves online for their motors).

IMO the most interesting results are "hidden" in speed and torque curves - how much (answer: yes, torque varies pretty much between full steps :) ) speed varies when micro stepping. In 3D printers we can see VFA at lower speeds (e.g. Prusa MK3, any Ender 3 clone), more strongly when the printer is designed for high speed (e.g. Creality K1). They can be fixed in various ways (0.9 degree steppers on MK4, smaller steppers and pullies on K1C). Motor design (smooth stepping) and matching torque with moving mass (less torque and micro step judder with more momentum at higher speeds) and belts (spring) might lead to better print quality. Driver current may also affect VFA (not sure if it is tested) and might need to be dynamically adjusted for speed and acceleration of movement? Silencing stepper noise on Bambu Lab printers and Prusa XL probably also provides smoother surfaces with less VFA...

Nice Video! I am looking forward to the next Tests Resuls of the LDO Motors combined with a TMC5160.

I would like to see a test with microstepps

Amazing video, it must have taken a lot of time to do everything! It would have been cool to see performance of Moons motors, as they're very popular

Subbed, awesome content! I would be really interested in testing the 5160tpro with the same motor lineup. Things you could include would be how microstepping affects the curves aswell as input voltage. :)

Excellent video

Nice video, testing motors at same current setting would be better idea

Nice tests! You can try DM556, DM542 branded and unbranded drivers for comparison. And higher voltages too 36V and 48V. May be you can try higher Amps then specified by manufacturers and measure the temperatures, i regulary use steppers on higher amperage without problems.

wow great test machine

Very interesting! Would be great to also include a rough price of the motors next time

You need also to get LRC bridge so you can measure inductance values of the motors. Speed is really affected by inductance as if motor got high inductance voltage and respectively the current will not be able to go through the coil before it switches. So you put 1.77a but maximum current that goes trough is 1a. This can be changed with Voltage while increasing the voltage you mitigate this behavior as you saw with acient driver TB6600 which is terrible despite worse control Voltage was able to mitigate the effect of the inductace at the cost of thermal dissipation. You should start account for inductance bigger inductance bigger holding torque.

Looking forward to see similar test for 48 and 60V

Very nice experiments and Dymo tester!

You can use oscilloscope to get Voltage graph of the coils of the stepper. I use it when I tune up my steppers for my CNC.

I have had success using TMC5160 with Nema 23 motors for driving a peristaltic pump (pulsating load). I used spread cycle mode to get the best results in terms of limiting heat and noise for speeds from 0.1RPM to 500RPM. However, to accomplish this it is necessary to send a new configuration datagram based on selected speed.

You did a lot of valuable work here! I had actually contemplated getting IGUS steppers because they were some of the few who published Torque/speed graphs on their website. Though curiously their published numbers mark the motors as being a lot more powerful than even the LDO stuff in your test. maybe you could test one from them as well to see how the numbers hold up on your dyno?

Epic video

Leadshine 42cm06 might interest you for power and speed :)

Great video! How does the load cell interact with the brake disk?

If I'm not mistaken that tb6600 only adds external power mosfets to a driver so there's no reason you cant throw power mosfets being driven from the 2209. Also the 2150 is a cost effective candidate as well as the 8844 for higher power levels (i think thats it my memory is not to great these days). Also the real limiting factor should be the temp so maybe throw a probe on them. Anyway nice job and I like your dyno. :)

It would be interesting to have a Power vs Speed curve. As torque doesn't matter so much and can be "increased" by using a different mechanical setup (smaller pulley...). As well as static torque, dynamic torque only matters at a given speed...

Awesome video! I run the AH (high temp) version of the speedy power motors and they are brilliant. In my printers I’m using normal TMC5160’s @ 24v. However, in my little CNC machine, I’m running external TMC5160’s from MKS @ 36v. The results are amazing, I love these motors! 😂 PS, high temp means they are rated up to 180c according to the datasheet.

Amazing work. thank you! Wish there was a section for precision/position reliability also Any plan to make that dyne open source?

How did you extract the peaks from the rest of the data to get the motor dyno curve?

You should also include the fancy stuff, like Nanotec. And compare similarly specked models for this to make any sense.

Hey! Few questions: Have you calibrated the dyno? Kinda afraid of belt drive efficiency changes as speed and torque change. Have you tried applying the braking torque slower? I noticed on your scatter plots that you don't have many data points near the peak, which could indicate inertia of the system causing an error, as you're not only trying to combat the torque of the stepper, but also torque from the deceleration of the system. You can also run a higher resolution encoder, as torque of the stepper is proportional to the magnetic misalignment angle within the stepper (full torque at 1 full step deflection, it follows a sine curve). A very popular method of testing the torque to speed curve of a stepper is to set and hold constant braking torque and increase the speed gradually (so the inertial effects are minimal) till you observe skipping steps. Can't wait to see further developments, good luck

Great little dynamometer! Have you considered using a braking magnetic field instead of the clamping friction load? Just thinking you’d have a more consistent load since it must be vary hard to keep the variable of heat equal throughout each test. Also, a lot of the magic in stepper motors is done with a lot more microstepping than was demonstrated in this video. Can you provide the code and or lookup tables used?

As a Materials Science Engineer, I highly appreciate this video; very good job and thanks for sharing! Just a quick clarification: when you mention the 750 RPM for the 500mm/s on the bambulab using a 20 tooth pulley, were you assuming 8 microsteps or 16? Also, why did you went with 8 microsteps instead of 16 for your tests? Tks

Might be worth plotting `speed * torque` versus speed. (This is just 'output power' versus speed, give or take a constant factor.) It results in a much flatter graph, which tends to be much easier to read. Also, you can get stall torque with that setup. Just lock the brake on full, then drive the stepper.

I’d have done a few different tests too. Like, with the same stepper, see how the curve changes as a function of microstepping. And maybe to compare the motors at the same current rating. More importantly though, you didn’t plot the mechanical power alongside the torque-speed curve!

Nice setup ! 😃 The TB6600 drive you are using is not a TB6600, it has a Toshiba TB67S109 chip that is better than 6600 but less current capability. The same chip can be found on small step sticks, also.

You should try normal stepper driver, like TMC5160 (for example Btt tmc5160 Plus), and try the 24V and 48 Voltage Your TB6600 seams to be a shit driver, that's drastically limits potential of those motors I can easily achieve 1m/s on my 500x500mm bed size printer, using LDO-42STH60-2804AC-R on 48V, that's 5000 RPM on 12mm pulley I guess! 800mm/s with 24 Voltage And its moving quite heavy aluminium profile on X axis, and toolhead assembled from two INOX plates Good video, Im waiting for more ❤

I love the pun in the title screen 😂

You should have done these with 5160 drivers... The 2804 gets it's performance at 2.5A+@24v and 2504 at 2.0A+@48v

I recently had a problem involving this exact setup: a (generic noname) NEMA17 stepper, a TMC2209 driver (used with factory defaults as dir/step only drive) at 1/8 microstep and a 12V supply - low speed torque seemed ok, but the motor literally stalled around 600RPM or so, with no load, no matter what I did. Tried a beefier PSU, tried maxing the current pot as far as I dared, tried different microstep, nothing helped - even with gradually trying to raise the speed, the motor just started shaking and stalled. Really weird, and extremely disappointing - 600RPM a.k.a. a measly ten turns per second is NOT all that fast...

Torque is not everything, also how true the 1.8° steps are is important. With the encoder you can measure this, would like to see this :-)

poderia Usar o TMC2160. Excelente driver da trinamic, com capacidade de 4.1A e 36V.

#Bigtreetech send this guy bunch of drivers and boards

That’s a lot of model numbers

I few thoughts as a scientist: I saw a motor move in your test rig - you need to fix the mounting system. The twist will not be linear, and it ruins your torque test because some of the motors torque is being used to twist the motor in its mount. This is probably not a good place to use a printed part. While including the old school driver was "interesting," it should not be included for comparison since things are obviously not remotely similar. Your driver circuit is not properly designed and your measurements are being infected by back EMF from driving an inductive load. There should be a schematic with some of those motors showing how to deal with it - you will need some capacitors (of the correct type) to manage this. You can measure amperage with a shunt circuit using the RPi. It will not be a good as a dedicated amp meter, but it will be better than nothing. Lastly, you are probably also having issues with your wiring, especially in these low voltage tests where amperage is highest. In particular your breadboard is almost certainly not able to function at high amps. Voltage drop over the circuit can be a major issue, especially if you are using Chinesium connectors. Your circuit needs to be built with a huge margin, something like 80% derating to ensure it is not affecting the experiment. Solder those high amp wires, use genuine western made wire and connectors purchased from a place like Mouser (Not Amazon)

I'm trying to figure out why you can't measure torque at zero speed. I'd think the load cell on the dyno wouldn't be the problem. Is the problem with needing to provide steps to the driver? Any insight would be appreciated. I really enjoyed the video. Thanks for all the hard work. I subscribed.

Ah.. should have used a more powerful microcontroller from the start.. next time try 1.5x the maximum amperage

I'm a bit sad you didn't include a quick noise comparison. Put them all on the 2209 with the same microsteps at the same rpm and see which is quietest.

There is no such thing as "the best", the best for what purpose? At what current, for what speed, under what load?

Good test. Note the curve for LDO motors (at 13:45) is not marked speed-torque, but torque over frequency (hz). Would this not illustrate a claimed property for step frequency, rather than RPM?

chinese vs chinese vs chinese vs chinese i was hoping to see some nidec, sanyo or nanotec ones. you will never see a professional product that requires a contract to order using ldo or omc motors.

Well now we know that the TB driver are trash 😂 Get a DM driver and do tests with that as well, they're cheap, especially from china The higher high speed torque with higher current motors tells us that those motors has less phase inductance, less inductance means less time to charge the coils, means it can reach higher speeds, the downside is that the torque of those motors are "less" compared to the current they use, so to speak And the graph they gave with the LDO motors are... fascinating... it goes against physics soooo... not sure I would trust a company after seeing that ngl

Where are you from majfriend? Are you from WinnieThePoh