{"id":13155,"date":"2022-01-06T10:00:30","date_gmt":"2022-01-06T18:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/?p=13155"},"modified":"2026-02-21T00:24:38","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T08:24:38","slug":"working-principle-of-stepper-motor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/working-principle-of-stepper-motor\/","title":{"rendered":"Working Principle of Stepper Motor: 2026 Ultimate Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_82_2 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/working-principle-of-stepper-motor\/#What_Is_Stepper_Motor\" >What Is Stepper Motor?<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/working-principle-of-stepper-motor\/#Stepper_Motor_Construction\" >Stepper Motor Construction<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/working-principle-of-stepper-motor\/#Working_Principle_of_Stepper_Motor\" >Working Principle of Stepper Motor<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stepper motors are a particular type of DC motor that is used every day in both industrial and commercial applications because of their low cost, high reliability, high torque at low speeds, and simple, rugged construction that operates in almost any environment. In this article, we will cover the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">working principle of stepper motor<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Follow this new blog in Linquip to find out more about these motors.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-13168 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/3.-main-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Working Principle of Stepper Motor\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/3.-main-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/3.-main-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/3.-main-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/3.-main-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/3.-main-696x392.jpg 696w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/3.-main-1392x783.jpg 1392w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/3.-main-1068x601.jpg 1068w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/3.-main.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"What_Is_Stepper_Motor\"><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What Is Stepper Motor?<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-size: 14pt;\">A stepper motor is a type of brushless synchronous DC motor that, unlike many other standard types of electric motors, doesn\u2019t just rotate continuously for an arbitrary number of spins until the DC voltage passing to it is shuts off.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-size: 14pt;\">Instead, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stepper_motor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">stepper motors<\/a> are a type of digital input-output device for precision starting and stopping. They\u2019re constructed so that the current passing through it hits a series of coils arranged in phases, which can be powered on and off in a quick sequence. This allows the motor to turn through a fraction of a rotation at a time and these individual predetermined phases as what we refer to as \u2018steps\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-size: 14pt;\">A stepper motor is designed to break up a single full rotation into several much smaller and essentially equal part-rotations. For practical purposes, these can be used to instruct the stepper motor to move through set degrees or angles of rotation. The result is that a stepper motor can be used to transfer minutely accurate movements to mechanical parts that require a high degree of precision.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-size: 14pt;\">Stepper motors are typically digitally controlled, and function as key components in an open-loop motion-control positioning system. They\u2019re most commonly used in holding or positioning applications where their ability to assert much more clearly defined rotational positions, speeds, and torques make them ideally suited to tasks demanding and extremely rigorous movement control.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-size: 14pt;\">Some industrial and scientific applications of stepper motors include robotics, machine tools, pick and place machines, automated wire cutting and wire bonding machines, and even precise fluid control devices.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Stepper_Motor_Construction\"><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stepper Motor Construction<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-size: 14pt;\">The Stepper motor is made up of the stator and rotor. The rotor is the movable part that has no winding, brushes, and commutator. The stator is made up of multipole and multiphase winding, usually of three or four phases winding wound for a required number of poles decided by desired angular displacement per input pulses.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-13167 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.-main-1-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Working Principle of Stepper Motor\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.-main-1-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.-main-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.-main-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.-main-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.-main-1-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.-main-1-696x464.jpg 696w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.-main-1-1392x928.jpg 1392w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.-main-1-1068x712.jpg 1068w, https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/2.-main-1-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Read More on Linquip<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><a title=\"The Only Guide You\u2019ll Ever Need For The Working Principle of Induction Motor\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/the-only-guide-youll-ever-need-for-the-working-principle-of-induction-motor\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Only Guide You\u2019ll Ever Need For The Working Principle of Induction Motor<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><strong><a title=\"Everything You Need to Know About Working Principle of AC Motor\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/working-principle-of-ac-motor\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Everything You Need to Know About Working Principle of AC Motor<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><strong><a title=\"Your Guide To The Working Principle Of DC Motor\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/working-principle-of-dc-motor\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Your Guide To The Working Principle Of DC Motor<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><a title=\"A complete Guide to The Difference Between Stepper Motor and DC Motor\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/difference-between-stepper-motor-and-dc-motor\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">A complete Guide to The Difference Between Stepper Motor and DC Motor<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Working_Principle_of_Stepper_Motor\"><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Working Principle of Stepper Motor<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-size: 14pt;\">In a normal brushed DC motor, voltage is applied to terminals which in turn causes a wire coil to rotate at speed inside a fixed magnet housing (the stator).<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-size: 14pt;\">In this setup, the spinning wire coil (the rotor) effectively becomes an electromagnet and turns rapidly at the center of the motor based on the familiar principle of magnetic attraction and repulsion. A combination of brushes (electrical contacts) and a rotary electrical switch is known as a commutator allows the direction of the current running to the wire coil to be alternated quickly. This creates continuous unidirectional spinning of the rotor coil for as long as the assembly is being fed with sufficient voltage.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-size: 14pt;\">A potential downside of this type of motor is that it spins continuously and for an arbitrary number of rotations until power is cut off. This makes it very hard to control the exact stopping point of the motor, rendering it unsuitable for applications requiring greater precision control. Manually controlling the on\/off the flow of power to the motor can\u2019t give you the required start-stop precision for performing minutely accurate movements.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-size: 14pt;\">In a stepper motor, the setup is quite different. Instead of a wire coil rotor spinning inside a fixed housing of magnets, stepper motors are built with a fixed wire housing (the stator in this case) arranged around a series of \u2018toothed\u2019 electromagnets spinning at the center. The stepper motor converts a pulsing electrical current, controlled by a stepper motor driver, into precise one-step movements of this gear-like toothed component around a central shaft.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-size: 14pt;\">Each of these stepper motor pulses moves the rotor through one precise and fixed increment of a full turn. As the current switches between the wire coils arranged in sequence around the outside of the motor, the rotary part can complete full or partial turns as required, or it can be made to stop very abruptly at any of the steps around its rotation.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-size: 14pt;\">Ultimately, the real strength of a stepper motor versus normal DC brushed motors is that they can quickly locate themselves to a known and repeatable position or interval, and then hold that position for as long as required. This makes them extremely useful in high-accuracy applications such as robotics and printing.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, this was everything you needed to know about the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">working principle of stepper motor<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. If you enjoy this article, let us know what you think by leaving a reply in the comment section. We will be more than glad to have your viewpoint on the article. Is there any question we can help you with? Feel free to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/sign-up?client_redirect=\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sign up<\/a> on Linquip where our experts are prepared to provide you with the most professional advice.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Buy Equipment or Ask for a Service<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">By using Linquip RFQ Service, you can expect\u00a0to receive quotations from various suppliers across multiple industries and regions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/linquip.com\/get-quote?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=content&amp;utm_campaign=product_list&amp;utm_term=product_list&amp;utm_content=rfq\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Click Here to Request a Quotation From Suppliers and Service Providers<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stepper motors are a particular type of DC motor that is used every day in both industrial and commercial applications because of their low cost, high reliability, high torque at low speeds, and simple, rugged construction that operates in almost any environment. In this article, we will cover the working principle of stepper motor. Follow &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-motor"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13155"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37606,"href":"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13155\/revisions\/37606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linquip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}