There are a lot of fun projects you can do with stepper motors salvaged from old printers or disk drives. However, it isn’t always clear how to connect to some strange motor with no markings or schematics.

The basic idea is simple. Using a special jig, connects an LED across two random pins and spins the motor. If the LED lights, you’ve found a coil. You just don’t know which coil, yet. You can also short two wires and note when you feel resistance when you spin the shaft.

First, we will go over the most common mechanical methods to reduce vibration in stepper motors.

1.  Install a mechanical clean damper.

An easy method to reduce vibration is to install a clean damper on the rear shaft of the motor.  Clean dampers are basically hermetically sealed plastic cases with an inertia body packed with silicon gel. The extra inertia and silicon gel help absorb the vibration and provides a stable damping effect.

2.  Use a high resolution type stepper motor.

Some motor manufacturers provide stepper motors with an increased number of rotor teeth (100 instead of 50).  The increased nu