Thread: Very hot stepper motors

Unless if they start exceeding 80 degrees I would not worry, I've had plenty of people worry about the heat from the stepper motors but in the 2 years of selling them have never had a motor die due to excess heat.

They have class B insulation so should handle up-to 130 degrees before the motors life is drastically reduced.

Originally Posted by Ch4iS

Unless if they start exceeding 80 degrees I would not worry, I've had plenty of people worry about the heat from the stepper motors but in the 2 years of selling them have never had a motor die due to excess heat.

They have class B insulation so should handle up-to 130 degrees before the motors life is drastically reduced.

OK, thats reassuring. Thanks Chris.

I'll disagree with those statements-with reason...

I've burned out some servos (not steppers), but they were around 40 oz-in, and were for the Z axis of our router.
The problem turned out to be the delrin nut in the acme lead screw that lifted the Z axis up & down.
Over time the nut got hot & started to bind on the screw, and the servos had to work harder to do the job, got hot & eventually died.
(The level of heat would have fried an egg, if that helps!)

Replacing it with a ballnut leadscrew setup fixed our problem.

So, I'd respectfully suggest looking for places with unexpected friction...

Hi Stewey.

Thanks for the input. I've done a few more runs since and although the motors are getting hot, they seem to reach a temperature plateau and don't really rise above it (not enough to fry an egg though!). There doesn't appear to be any binding anywhere and all the axes can be moved by hand with the steppers powered down. I will keep an eye on them though

Cheers,
Paul