Spirography/Tripple Tunnel

It's a more detailed pic, but I don't have any pictures with just the leads in them. All the square ones have four wires on the leads. The two long cylinder ones seem like they'll work great on my next try at this, since they seem to be able to go very slowly when 2.4 V is supplied. Anyway, here's the full res image of the one before... I hope that helps a little. The back came off one of the square ones, but it looks like it will still work, it has 8 coils of wire arranged in a octagon. It looks to me like a stepper.

Well... 4 leads can be for DC motors with actuators or rotation counter or a step motor. All are valid choices and can only be distinguished by getting some better readings and doing some further testing of the unit. The easiest thing I can tell you to do to make sure of their type is to power them with a battery or something. Check the source they came from for the source and try to provide some decent power. Stepper motors are not very sensitive and won't burn out on you. They are rather slow if you don't have the right driver and data feed. When you power up a stepper motor it will take a step when on one pair, and it can be the other pair or changing one of the leads to get you another step. To drive the motor without a spec sheet you will need to do this. If you are certain of them being stepper motors though, you can simply conduct a continuity test to see which leads correspond to the different coils.

Either way, I'm sorry I wasn't of much help, but I hope I gave an idea on how to figure them out.

The first reason I got into lasers, aside form the beauty, was my intention to create a CNC router powered by a 60W CO2 laser to make my own engraver. I have the whole thing done, I just need the laser itself. I wrote the software and I have the steppers and the stepper drivers. I later decided that I'd rather use diodes because of the ease of mounting a smaller diode than the whole tube + high voltage power supply + optics... etc. Hopefully I'll be able to get something to make it a working engraver soon. My priorities have shifted lately though...

--DDL

just get the damn co2 tube... you could also get collimating optics and mount the whole thing in a holdable mount with a looooong plug cord
and burn a few trees at a distance then unmount it and install into your engraver