[rotccapt]

hi all sorry for the noob question but i am in a slight predicament. i have a router that was built from the plans at hobbycnc.com. and i am using their ez board to control my machine. so everything was working great but i decided to clean up the wiring for it and i need to extend my stepper motor wires to make them work with the new location of the control board and power supply.

so i am using 8 wire stepper motors wired uni-polar so i have 6 wires coming off the motors.now i have an abundant supply of 5 conductor wire and i wanted to know it if is possible to use the wire i have and just connect the two common wires together.

thank you for the help, and again sorry for the noob question but my google skills are lacking right now

[doorknob]

I have not actually tried this, but seeing as how some stepper motors intended for use with unipolar drivers have only five wires, with the commons tied together, I'd have to believe that it would work OK for you.

[rotccapt]

if it try it will i hurt the motors or will they just not work?

[doorknob]

It should not hurt the motors, and probably will not cause any noticeable problems.

How much extra wire are you planning to add? The one concern that I would have is if you were planning to use a very long cable then there might be some voltage drop issues, since the current from both phases would be sharing a single conductor. But I would try it.

[rotccapt]

only about a foot.

well i think i figured it out. at first i though the wire was only 5 conductor but there is a braided ground in it that took some fiddling with to get solder to flow onto it. so it turns out i have 6 conductor wire after all. thanks for the info though, and i may give it a try anyways to see what happens for future referance