Materials:
- 14 kg-cm NEMA 23 stepper motor
- LM317 3-Terminal Adjustable Voltage Regulator
- Generic (OSEPP) Adafruit v1 motor shield
- TRIAD Power Supply
The stepper motor requires constant power at 8.6V, but the power supply is incapable of constant power below 12V. To compensate for this, we use a voltage regulator circuit whose voltage output is controlled by choice of resistors (shown in the circuit diagram below). The diagram also shows the need for coupling capacitors, but these were not used as we saw no noticeable degradation in performance by leaving them out.