ATM Stepper motor control

["Brent Russell" <brussel@global.co.za>]

Hi All

I am busy working on Bartelizing my 16" dob using a homemade roller drive. I
have ben having some thoughts on the steppers to use.

I don't have any large steppers (although I can get) but what I do have is
lotsa (at least 8) floppy drive steppers. These are small but generate quite
a bit of torque. What about having 2 or 3 of these motors connected in
parallel all running on the same disk.

I see this having a number of advantages. first is that the motors are
designed for 12 volts (most of the bigger ones round here are 24 volts) and
any periodic error introduced by the motors themselves would be reduced by
an averaging effect as I have heard it said that the motors don't have a
perfectly uniform step size. The other advantage is that slippage would be
reduce because I would have two drive rollers and if one slips a little the
other can at least take up the slack.

So what do you guys think??

Clear skies

Brent