Help for choosing power supply for steppers and Peltier coolers

[larsdenmark]

Hi

I have started to work a little bit with an Arduino going through the first examples of blinking an LED and playing with a servo motor. Everything works fine so far. I have a small bench power supply to power the servos, but it is not powerful enough to power my 12V stepper motor (for which I have a shield).

Should I buy a larger bench power supply that can deliver the power I need or am I better off choosing a fixed current power supply often seen used for CNC machines? My next experiments will involve a few stepper motors and some small 12V Peltier elements so I could easily be using 80-100W.

I live in Europe if that matters.

[Paul Price]

For the price of free, you can find discarded common wallwart power supplies or laptop power supplies, Many wallwarts are 12V at rated load(.8 to 2Amp), either can be fixed to 12V by a few 7812 regulator chips on a heatsink. These will do fine for <4amp steppers and many are discarded and the cost is free. A discarded PC power supply can deliver 12V at 8-amps and can be found in any discarded desktop PC.

If you have money to burn to keep your Peltiers cool,  and  if you need about 100W, look and you will find for cheap on ebay. Search for switching power supplies/battery chargers.

If you need large heatsinks, you will find them in any PC power supply.

[larsdenmark]

Thanks Paul

I think I'll go for the free (or almost free) options now. Ebay seems like a nice place to look.

  Lars