Man, you really are doing everybody a service with this video. Thank you so much for going through all this effort to educate us. This video was awesome!

Back in the days when I used to work for Xerox doing field service in downtown Oahu HI on Xerox’s 50xx and 53xx series low volume copy machines, it always amazed me how quiet the platen scanners were in the 5328 vs the older generation 5028 (for example). One day at the Xerox warehouse in downtown Honolulu, I found myself sitting in my car on my lunch break staring at the driver boards for the platen scanners, wondering what in the world made this machine so quiet. The 5328 series driver boards look damn near identical to the 5028 driver boards. You can even stick a 5328 driver board into the 5028 copier if you wanted a quieter running, older copy machine. Mind you, the entire being of the 5328 was quiet. The platen scanners, the ADF feed drive and ADF belt drive (the big ass white belt that drags your original documents onto the platen glass from the document feeder on top of the glass for your documents) ran quiet. At that time, I was amazed at every single improvement done on the 5328 from its 5028 predecessor. Every single stepper in the 5328 had this characteristic, with parts interchangeable with the 5028. Every single headache that the 5028’s gave customers were addressed in the 5328. Using almost identical electronics. WTF, right? The Xerox gig I had was my very first technical job out of school, so this was over 28 years ago. Watching this video, I finally know how the Xerox engineers made the next generation 53xx series covers run quiet. Thank you for that!

The microstepping is only one ingredient in being quieter. Stealthchop (on by default and in your test I think?) is another. But even with Stealthchop off and interpolation to 256 microsteps off (real nominal microstepping) it's significantly quieter than A4988 at same (eg 16) number of microsteps. It'd be interesting to measure why.

I'd like this test to be done while at proper speeds, not at a constant slow speed. Also, while changing speed as the added interpolation will have to guess how the speed will change in the future to create a non discontinuous signal that causes noise. Acceleration curves should be visible if stepped pulserate is used, stepping back and forth between the rates and triggering scope on the change.

I have always found your shoulder to lean on whenever I needed it. Happy Birthday to the loveliest brother!

What an incredibly useful, straightforward, and informational video. Great work dude, thanks!

The main "break" in the A4988 sinewave is the part-square-wave that you see poking through. That's because of a configuration error on the original pololu driver that everybody since then has copied. It's a whole lot better when you modify the stepper driver to change the chips configuration.

That was an awesome explanation. Thanks for the demo. I had no idea how that worked at all. I was just glad my 3D Printer came with silent drivers!

The 2208s saved many marriages.

As always Michael, great stuff! Hope your fairing well! Keep up the amazing work!

Decrease in incremental torque doesn't mean what most people think it means. The torque overall is the same on the fullstep and half step positions, independently if you are using full step or microstepping, it only decreases the torque in the interval between the steps, because it is trying to hold in a position that is between the coils. So there is no lost torque, only incremented accuracy, with a precision still within the full step precision.

I had no idea how much i needed this video!

Apart from learning a bit about stepper motor drivers, I also discovered what POKITMETER TR is. It looks interesting for people who don't have a big desk to run all these machines from. I don't have space for a full size oscilloscope. This looks like an interesting alternative, thanks!

Wow, that was a great video! I had no idea that the number of microsteps were so important. Thanks.

Excellent Video with a great explanation of silent drivers. Time to update some of my stepper motor projects. Also, I really like the Pokit tool.

Great video, and an unexpected bonus is that your observation about interrupting the circuit with the meter may offer a solution to a problem with my own printer! Fascinating. Well presented information, thank you. Liked and Subbed.

Michael, kudos for that video. I need to consider this in my projects to reduce stepper motors noise.

So that is why my 3D printer is so much quieter with the new main board! Great explanation👍🏻🇸🇪

You only get an increase in torque by increasing voltage at high step rates. That is due to inductive reluctance. The higher the step rate the smaller the window to dump current into the motor windings. At some high speed that short duration becomes an issue. Inductors resist changes in current. Voltage overcomes that inductive reluctance. Reluctance is like active resistance.

Thanks for this - I have been building mechanical some clocks driven by Arduino and a small stepper motor. I had been using the A4988, but was frustrated by the noise/vibration at the low speed I'm using (1.5RPM). These are a total game changer, it runs silently now.

I learned something new today! Thanks!

Excellent video! I switched everything I have over to TMC drivers, and now I know why they're so good! I'd love to see the waveform as the motor accelerates up and down, I do wonder how that sine wave ends.

I stumbled on this, when I searched for silent stepper motors. Good to know that the noise is actually dependent on the driver. I guess you could make a silent stepper motor doing full steps, but it would require damping and isolating materials and bearings and whatnot. This is good to know! I plan to make a steam punk clockwork. Instead of a pendulum, a stepper motor would drive the fastest cog wheel. The noise should be all about the cog wheels and not the motor at all.

That oscilloscope is so cool! I have got to get one

WOW. That was an insightful video. thanks

I'm using a STEPPERONLINE DM542T Controller and although it cost me $40, I think it's well worth it! Very flexible and dependable controller! I've had it for a few years now and no complaints at all!!

thanks for a terrific and really easy to understand view on micro stepping. Until now I didn’t really understand why micro stepping exists.!!

Thanks Michael, Informative video!

Awesome. You might just have shown me a pretty solution for a private project I`m planning, Thanks a lot!

Great video Michael

Realy interest video. You literaly repeat advertisement of TMC2208 on their site or they TDS. Great idea!

Awesome explanation

Such an amazing video, subbed immediately.

Thanks, yes i learn something, great video.... Im diving in to all this of CNC shield for Arduino AND i have a lot to learn

Thanks for the info.

Very informative video

Cheers for the info. Was deliberating on doing a stepper project. Going to build you neat DIY camera track project. Cheers!

great video. thanks

And the cost difference. Thanks for the video!

Great video!

Nice video, yes this is the main contributor to sound. Fun fact, in FluidNC, we always use the highest possible microsteps for simple A/DRV stepsticks, because otherwise it would be impossible to get the same sockets to run the TMC SPI drivers with a few jumpers. The ESP32 is fast enough for this; we can easily throw 300 kHz at 6 motors at the same time. You can't do something like this on a simple Arduino tho, the CPU just isn't fast enough.

That reminds me of a stepper motor I played with in the late 90s. I was giving it 5V and it didn't have enough torque for the application. Without much though I just decided to increase it to 12V and was pleasantly surprised.

Nice visual explanation of why they are so much quieter. Could you perhaps have done a comparison with the TMC's in full-step mode? I think the drivers do a little more to make the motor silent than the microsteps.

wow so nice love it

excelent Analisis!!!!!!!!

Thanks for sharing. I subscribed

Nice video, thanks :)

KZfaq has been recommending I watch this video for 2 days straight. KZfaq's like "YOU WILL LIKE THIS GUY!!!!!!!".

I upgraded my Anycubic Mega X that I've had for a number of year. I put TMC2208 drivers on it (HOLY CRAP!!!) Went from very VERY noisy prints to silent... standing next to it, you can't hear it running at all!!! I wired in two relays and one is running between the outlet to powersupply to be able to kill printer power with relay. Wired it to NO (Normally Open) so when its plugged in, its OFF by default. Then a second one for 12v control a set of LED's I wired around the posts and a ring around the print head. I also wired this one NO as well. I then setup Octoprint on a raspberry pi laying around and put a picam on it and mounted it. Set the relays into the pi. I now have it setup where its all one unit, I have the pi powered off the printer power too. So plug in one cable, and pi boots up. Log into octoprint interface and turn on printer, turn on LED's, and setup print by sending the print file remotely. after print is done, it all shuts off and sends me an email with a picture of the print. I can view the printer in real time, turn on and off LED's and printer from anywhere. I LOVE OCTOPRINT!!!! I also have two physical momentary buttons wired up tot he pi on the outside of the case, so just incase the Octoprint doesnt connect to wifi, or i'm someplace new and not on the wifi yet, I can turn on and off the printer and lights from there. Just coded it where if gpio xx is pulled down, the toggle printer relay GPIO and same for LED relay connection.

great discovery

Interesting thanks

Wow youtube has been recommending this video to me NON-STOP for the past week or so - very strange. I'm not even mad though, good video + subscribed. (however the aggressive recommendation is still weird though)

excellent

Nice comparison! The difference in sound level is amazing. Do you have more info on how the driver accomplishes the microstepping? If it would actually linearly regulate the current, the power dissipation in the chip would be big, does it do that or is it doing PWM/chopping?

I finally understand the micro-stepping of steppers.

I have these in my Ender 3V2 and it is a common driver in general for many printers and it does the job really well. They are indeed really quiet and u hear only a soft humming during rapid moments. The increased precision is also a benefit. The really loud fans in the machine however takes the low noise benefit away somewhat. The noise level in total while printing is still comparable to a hairdryer at full blast and earplugs are definitley required if sitting near the machine while it is printing to avoid possible hearing damage (if you for example like me have the CAD computer next to the printer and work on that while its printing and keep your eye on the machine at the same time in case something goes wrong. A pair of in ear wireless headphones works perfect for this purpose and allow you to get sound and music from the computer while filtering out the machine noise). Loud stock fans are a common issue on these machines in general it seems.

Brilliant amazing. It's good to do a test on the machine itself out of interest

i am going to use 2 of the 2208 for my focus stacking rig, one for the normal linear rail and the other for a rotary table.

thank you

That pocket meter is dope.

I'm working on a goto telescope project, I'm thinking of using stepper motors to control the left/right & up/down and may couple them with worm gear to increase the torque as speed is not the primary goal.

THANKS

muy bueno!

Dude. Like, what on earth did I just watch? I mean, like,... I understood some of the words. Well, kudos to you for knowing this stuff. I think youtube's algorithm is broken.

Fabulous video thanks !!! May I ask you with which Driver you would drive NEMA 34 or 42 motors given they already have suitable controllers?

Excellent explanation! I've always wondered what the difference is between the two drivers. Is there a way to overcome the challenge with the microcontroller needing to send more pulses to the motor so that the controller doesn't get bogged down with the task of driving the motors? Maybe a separate mini controller dedicated to controlling the motors and it communicated with the master MCU via some sort of serial connection?

2:00 Nice, Autechre live set!

thank you Sir for the informative video. can you try Field Oriented control of Stepper using TMC or Controller or both? any piece of advice ? Thank you

it would be interesting to see the sinewave produceb by the A4988 when using TL Smoothers, in order to understand why they work

Would love to see the same video with motor controllers for ebikes or scooters.

well, one thing for sure: with really high microstepping set you should never use software pulse generation. Use hardware PWM whenever possible.

now I'm curious if I'll every try and swap the stepper controller IF I get my hands on a resin printer. quieter motors for home use always sounds like a better option.

my experience with stepper is that noise level can change significantly under load. Without load, it can be as quiet as you want it to be under microsteping. Also when you put motor on the table with its axle perpendicular to table surface, the rotary vibration of the rotor does not hit the table surface and it's quiet. If let the axle stay parallel to the table surface, you can hear a drastic noise increase , because the table surface can now feel any change in the rotor position.

To those considering stealth-chop, I frequently see homing fail when using stealth-chop. Further, stealth-chop frequently loses steps even at the highest current settings. Yes, it is quieter but not worth the inaccuracy.

Thanks for doing this video. This applies to nema 17 with TMC2208/09. I don’t like the noise of Nema 23 noise too. Is there a way to silent Nema 23? Thanks again.

Lekker channel

What do the TL smoother do to the signal?

There's a strong anomaly in the sinewave of the A4988 following zero crossing. I wonder if you can tune it out with decaymode tuning through the resistors to the ROSC pin of the chip. And then how it affects the noise.

Very descriptive and interesting video! Are those modules pin-compatible and directly interchangeable with each other?

a thermal comparison would be great

I have a motor that runs on one speed only, so I simply put a filter in the wiring as well and it smoothed out nicely.

The main reason they manage to do it *silently*, is because they do the switching in the ultrasound range. If we could hear higher frequencies, we'd hear the whining of the coils from being switched.

Hi, Thanks a lot, its really greate effort and great knowledge. i need to do a project for a preset position linear actuator with a DC motor abd a stepper motor, with Arduino Mega or UNO but i am not able to write the code and the scheme, can you please help. Regards

Well that explains why all 8 bit boards with 2208/2209’s quickly get overwhelmed, and the need for 32/64 bit boards grew so fast

I have run stspin220 which also have 256 microstep mode, and has more noise than tms. So it is not about microstep mode and current waveform only. tms has voltage sine waveform also.

Seriously well done video. Good job!

Does the TMC2208 require a lot more from the microcontroller since it does 256 microsteps rather than 16?

great explanation! Id like to motorise my outside window shades and maybe stepper motor is good for this task, but I want it to be very quiet at the same time and not hear whining, do you think this is a good fit for that project? I also need the motor to raise and lower the blinds all the way with this, now I have a hand crank on the inside and measured 2,79Nm break away torque, and i would like it to spin the former hand crank where I will make an attachment for the motor with about 100rpm, is a stepper motor up to that task? thank you :)

do you know CNC wegstr, their stepper motor can move 0.01 mm, it's really amazing, my question is what is the best motor driver so I can do the same thing with cnc wegstr?

You could have used double click to reverse the direction of the motor. Of course that also means you would need to implement button debounce.

For an automated camera dolly running on a track, I 1st tried stepper motors, but they were too loud. I found synchronous AC motors (microwave platter motor) are SILENT. Perfect, and huge torque. Problem is control.. Not so easy. To get the dolly to hit a stop at both ends of the track, I found the way is to force stop it.. The mag field flips and it moves the other way.

I know nothing about motors but i was initially thinking this would affect torque. As you also said in the video later on. Is there a way to calculate how big the torque drop would be?

Is it too expensive to just filter the signal? Or to use a DAC?

TMC2208 autotunes a little to a specific stepper on startup. It's a bad idea to power them up with unconnected coil. And there's also inductive currents that could kill your oscilloscope if you disconnect coil on the fly.

Very cool explanation and demo!! Slightly related..do you know if trinamics's stepper motors are much more precise than "ordinary chinese" ones? Tks :)

Thank you for the explanations, it was not clear for me that more pulses have to be generated to operate the stepper motor at a given speed. I will try to use a TMC2209 chip soon with an arduino, to reduce the noise produced by the stepper motor. Using a brushless motor could also reduce the noise, so why using a stepper motor instead of a brushless motor ?

8:33 Increasing voltage results in incresing motor speed limit. To inctrease motor torque you need to increase current.

I've come to realize that stepper motors and BLDC motors are actually quite similar. The only difference is one needs the clarke transform and the other doesn't! Maximum performance (and low noise) ideally can be achieved by actually running FOC and skipping the clarke transform and SVM. If you want closed-loop sensorless at zero speed, you'll have to do saliency tracking which may not be silent...

As a saffer in the uk its surreal hearing a SAFRICA accent on a random YT algorithim suggestion

Maybe compare audio to a standard DC Motor of the same size but geared to produce the same torque?