Generic parts?

[kresty]

Are there standard parts that are used in lots of different things? eg: if I wanted to look at stepper motors, are there some that are in many things (eg: 3D printers/CnC/robots), or are they all different things?

I saw an instructables savage mentioned http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-30-laser/ and see that the parts list includes a cheap Chinese stepper.  I haven't really played with those, but if they're "standard" maybe that's a model I should look into?

[savagecreature]

I'm thinking this is information better put on the wiki, if for no other reason that there's so much of it. Also, it might be something that people want to refer to a lot. However, I'll go ahead and waste some space here with my possibly spurious knowledge.

the cheap Chinese stepper in that instructable is probably questionable. I ordered one. I'll let you know.

In any case, it's not much of a standard motor or form factor for most of what I do (that being CnCs, 3D printers and robots).
Of course "standard" has to be defined, but I think all in all the most common standard when it comes to stepper motors are the NEMA motors. Printers and 3D printers and CnCs in my experience are using NEMA 11's, 14's, 17's, depending on the workload requirements. My big CnC uses 23's.  NEMA is the Association of Electrical Equipment and Medical Imaging Standards.  (I don't know where the "NEMA" part comes from.  The NEMA part of the motor is really only it's mounting plate. The screws are a fixed, standard distance from each other and the motor output shaft and a standard size and thread count (all metric).  The size of the motor behind that face plate can vary a great deal. They have various output torques and different housing sizes and can have different degrees of accuracy.

These are NEMA 17s of varying sizes and torques:



I could ramble on about steppers for considerably longer, but hopefully this is at least a marginally interesting answer to your question.  I'll be sure to set up a part of the wiki for this and similar information when we get it up and running.

[kresty]

Good to know. I'd seen the NEMA 17 thing. Is there decodable nomenclature for the p/ns (I dunno, torque or whatever else is interesting)