Stepper motors cooling techniques ⚙️

[@makex_se]

This was incredibly helpful and we have now changed the way we cool a critical stepper motor in one of our machines. Used to cool with heatsink from the back but now we pass air around the stepper with heat sinks placed around it. Works better :)

[@victortitov1740]

i would like to warn everyone about drilling holes though. The gap between the rotor and the stator is incredibly narrow. Making it free of dust and dirt is very important, otherwise friction can ruin your day.

[@stijnsprojects]

Valid comment, it makes the motors more 'fragile' but it's still worth looking at the results and thinking about other solutions in my opinion.

[@TrueHolarctic]

Filtering the air before blowing it through the motor should reduce the chance of dust falling into the gap. Powerful enough fans should keep the dust away from the insides of motor Edit: I forgot that fan will not always be working

[@a.c.2659]

@@TrueHolarcticmaybe add a flappy membrane to the exhaust holes that only opens when the fan is blowing and closes when fans stop?

[@sancherfrost1337]

@@a.c.2659 i dont think it will so much help, when fan turn on, he suck all dust from air into a stepper.

[@danthemancasey]

3M's 9448A is not thermal transfer tape and is not made for heatsinks. It comes with many of cheap heatsinks because it is thin and cheap and sorta works, but work well it does not. 3M's 8805 would be the correct thermally conductive adhesive for this application.

[@feilko2170]

the difference would have been just noticeable..

[@stefans.8027]

Very helpful! It looks like just adding the fan and blow air on it already gets you 80% of the best results.

[@dfan8432]

Good experiments. Very helpful. Please try water cooled heat sick next time.

[@GelX]

I think the rational cooling method is by add heat sink on the side area, and blow it with airflow. drilling hole to stepper body is worse idea, because it is allowed DUST to enter in. it may cause problem for long run period. You was inspiring me to make cooling system for my Nema 34 stepper motor, thanks dude, your awesome.

[@Jorgefer88]

Very interesting and instructive video. I just needed this information for the design of future robotic actuators, thanks!

[@patrickboyd8368]

This is as effective as Feynman's demonstration with a glass of cold water, when we raked Morton Thiokol over the coals. I'm subscribing and telling everyone in the 3d printing community to watch this video b/c it should have 10M views by now, .....it could literally be a single 24x36 poster, put up at the end of every aisle of booths at every rep rap festival....wow! I'm putting side heatsinks and a fan or two on my Y axis ASAP.

[@stijnsprojects]

Thanks for the compliments. I did a finite element analysis afterwards and posted the results on my Instagram.

[@Jim_One-wl4ke]

I stick stepper driver AL heatsinkS on the black stator housing 4 sides..works great for me.

[@MrSilbarita]

Great video! The only thing I'm missing is a reference air temperature, to get a sense of how much of the heat is getting dissipated

[@stijnsprojects]

There is a link in the description to the spreadsheet, the ambient temperature was 24°C. There is also some extra information about the cooling power, fan size, ... .

[@MasParaQue]

Straight to the point!! Great video. Subscribed!!

[@DMWinterburn]

Great insight to cooling stepper motors. You helped me alot. Thanks buddy

[@parthmehta4105]

Amazing video. Very informative thanks a lot!

[@timw7406]

Great video, thanks for testing

[@rondlh20]

Interesting! Either way, 50 degrees C is nothing to worry about

[@haydenc2742]

In order to keep dirt and stuff out of the stepper...just a fan blowing across at an angle seems to do the best, but for best cooling holes and airflow thru the steppers is the way to go

[@siavashmohammady9095]

It is really good if you can test it in the higher temperature as well

[@DmitryDubinets]

Thanks for info! Great job.

[@jasonkeen7108]

Try holes fan and a polite module with cooling side towards fan with a heat sink on the hot side....think the results would be interesting

[@henriramonfosse]

thank you so much for this.

[@yatokaneki7472]

Great video!

[@vasyapupken]

but why ? normal operating temperature of all standard NEMA steppers is 95°C (you can find it in manual). there is no need to cool them at all. they are meant to run hot and it's totally fine for them.

[@Sebastian-cn8lh]

if you use ALOT the printer without breaks (to selling)... you can prolong the life of the motors if you don't lem increase the temperature over 50°C.

[@scienceraven1200]

you can find special mineral oil to transfer from windings to outer shell, needs a hold for input, just a tiny bit of oil will change the transfer a lot, pro motor thermal oil uses some kind of suspension maybe just fine iron to aid heat transfer, search for grintech cooling oil formula to know more.

[@l3d-3dmaker58]

I'm thinking that for effective cooling, you need small heatsinks on the sides with air OR for water cooling a small tube jacket around the stator instead of on the back then

[@Brocknoviatch]

That was really interesting! How about heat pipes to a heat sink from the sides?

[@jameselliott9397]

Do stepper motors run cooler with controller set to less steps per revolution?

[@stijnsprojects]

Do you mean by setting the microstepping to a different setting?

[@propheteyebert7063]

Interesting test. The easy solution might be a 5015 fan with a printed shroud around 4 sides of the motor. All the airflow would contribute to heat removal. Note that steppers don't need cooling unless they're pushed to the limits. Most motors are happy up to 80C, so cooling one that is far below that, won't make any practical difference.

[@jagmarc]

A smallholding owner's walk-behind engine driven plow (plough) was worried about overheating. So he drilled holes in the ducting carrying the cooling fan directed-air!

[@MrNoipe]

Nice test!

[@misanthropictear]

great video, you may know this already but running too cool can actually get your worse results on your speed/torque curve just like running too hot will. you probably wouldn't see negative effects of cooling though unless your ambient was really low.

[@patrickboyd8368]

Agreed, I've run into this with other motors that were clearly optimized ( the good quality ones at least) for thermal expansion and the changes in the magnetic fields at "normal operating temps". Manufacturers are realistically and understandably hesitant to give MTBF times at any recommended temperature for the kinds of motors I typically see for 3d printer builds....but it would be nice to know even if I'm not sure I could do much about it ...short of more fans and more noise... or water cooling which is why I'm watching Vez3D's video on that experiment next. The PID temperature control of a liquid system must have really slow response times unless I'm wrong and simply stopping the pump would literally get temps back up from a too-cold scenario effectively quickly(?).

[@aquanano1]

Even if in an enclosed setup this way of cooloing is not the best, the ideeas worth noted.

[@redpython99]

I would like to look into statorade for cooling, it's a magnetic oil made for ebike motors. I'm not sure if a stepper motor would work correctly with a magnetic oil inside

[@stijnsprojects]

I have some concerns about statorade that I have to investigate before I can make a final judgement. The problem is that the magnetic oil affects the working of the motor because it changes the field distribution in the rotor-stator-gap. I do think the motor will still work because the oil has a higher magnetic reluctance.

[@user-lx9jm1wo3h]

Why are your motors getting so hot in the first place though? Are you running too high of current on your drivers?

[@jamespray]

Great test and very useful information! Sub'd!

[@S00rabh]

Thank you

[@ArcAiN6]

If these tiny stepper motors are getting hot enough to require active cooling solutions, you're pumping too much current into them. There are two things you should do 1) Check the rating of your stepper motor, and reduce the current to be within the target range. 2) Utilize a stepper drive feature called idle current reduction that reduces the current applied to the motor to a set percentage when the motor is not moving.

[@stijnsprojects]

That is partially true, but people do look for cooling methods (fast 3D printing for example) and this is why I wanted to share my results. The discussion of how hard you should be on your motors is something different.

[@Erowens98]

With a heated enclosure you can begin to see overheating issues even running well within the stepper motors specs.

[@AnnaVannieuwenhuyse]

And besides this all, some of us like to go nuts.

[@soundspark]

@@Erowens98 Probably why I keep layer shifting whenever I try to print polycarbonate? Cabinet getting well-baked?

[@Celciusify]

@@soundspark It could be cable related too, but most likely heat related if the steppers are inside the enclosure.

[@aatkarelse8218]

A bit dry, but it does give you all you need in a short time!, good stuff!

[@Sebastian-cn8lh]

is good to know that heatsinks dont help at all if isnt connected with airflow

[@03jalapeno]

The 3m cooling pads are not suited to this

[@stijnsprojects]

I used the same adhesive for all heatsinks.

[@bubbasplants189]

Water cooling followed by heatsink+fan is my opinion before watching.

[@stijnsprojects]

Based on the results in the video, the water block should be mounted on the side, not the back.

[@bluegizmo1983]

Submerge them in salt water to keep them cool while running... 😂

[@SafetyDan101]

I think the heat sink on the back didn't help because of the way you attached it.

[@stijnsprojects]

I'm interested to hear what you would have done differently.

[@steamcastle]

But Why? Why would you try to cool a stepper motor,?

[@stijnsprojects]

If you make a smaller motor perform better you can achieve the same as a larger motor that performs worse, this principle is called downsizing.

[@steamcastle]

@@stijnsprojects just use at longer nema motor, and if you really care about performance close the loop, that that way you can reduce energy send to the motor to what is needed.

[@stijnsprojects]

I'm not saying that people should use smaller motors. I just did some testing and put the results in a video, everyone is free to do what they want with the results. I've seen many projects on KZbin where the motor is cooled from the back so for those people for example my video might be useful.

[@steamcastle]

@@stijnsprojects sorry didn't mean to sound hostile. I like stepper motors because one can run them open loop, but closing the loop makes things run so much more stable. although one still has to remember to set the maksimums, if you don't want to make the motor smoke, was fiksing a 60amp 600v motor drive, and using a 1kw motor which is not a problem as long as the feedback is working, well between test it had reset the current limet, so when it didn't see the motor move it it just just starte turning up the current until the motor moved or something broke, in this case it was a breaker that saved my test motor but a bit of smoke did some from it.

[@stijnsprojects]

It's always better to use the right motor for the job but many people try to use standard motors for everything. Closed loop steppers have come down in price but the adoption process is slow.

[@JurekOK]

If the acceleration - or the inertia - of the movement of your 3D printer head is a problem, then why not use a SCARA robot, or better yet, a parallel arm robot. Not only do these have less inertia than cartesian systems, but also pose no limit to how big the motor can be. I think you are "carving in the shit"

[@stijnsprojects]

My video is an analysis of cooling methods for stepper motors' I'm not saying that anyone should do anything with it, I'm just reporting the results.

[@Catjegirl100]

Are you flemish? Curious cuz of the accent :)

[@stijnsprojects]

That's correct

[@TheOfficialOriginalChad]

I spent 5 years as a field engineer working with electromechanical systems driven exclusively by stepper motors. Some of these machines ran 24/hr a day. Guess how many passive or active coolers I saw on stepper motors…0. That also happens to be the number of stepper motors I had to replace. You should NOT attempt to manage heat on a stepper motor. You SHOULD choose the correct stepper motor for the job. This advice is either by an amateur or by a pro preying on the ignorance of amateurs.

[@stijnsprojects]

For the industry this is totally true but if you look at people who build things for fun like very fast 3D printers, they do have motors that run hot and look for ways to cool them. Also it is just a test to find out what works and what does not, what you do with the information is up to you.

[@LGE-official]

okay man, no idea why you react so offensive to an educational video. And on top of that researchers and engineers developing motors will always perform such tests on existing motors and analyse the impact.

[@Erowens98]

There are definitely niche usecases, usually on small scale/prototypes. Where active cooling is helpful. Just because you haven't seen or thought of them doesn't mean they aren't out there. Of course for an industrial application where reliability is the most important part they get a stepper motor rated with a heavy safety margin. But maybe, for example, you're a design engineer trying to accelerate your prototyping by accelerating your desktop 3d printer. You dont want to add extra weight so a larger stepper motor is undesirable. So running a smaller stepper motor at the edge or even slightly beyond its spec may be a valid option. In those cases active cooling can be very helpful. This is coming from a mechanical deisgn engineer.

[@AnnaVannieuwenhuyse]

regardless of any opinion on whether you should be, it's very useful to know the effects of these methods.

[@Celciusify]

You're right, but some nieche printers run 48v on the steppers, And since reliability isn't paramount as in the industry,. they're run at/over the specified current rating. These steppers are not made for that amount of wattage put through them, and *will* fail unless cooled. And why don't we upgrade the steppers? Bigger doesn't mean faster, and for a 3d-printer we barely look at the torque. if we want to go faster we need to use Servos, and controlling these motors isn't as easy and they're atleast 10x the price.