Is there a quick easy test for a NEMA 23 Stepper to determine if the motor is good or not ? My thought was to try to find polarity of the stepper by holding wires together until I get some resistance on the output shaft. The wires are direct out from the stepper, I don’t get resistance after pairing different wire combinations. Would this indicate there may be an issue with the stepper ?
Motor failures are rare, steppers are really simple devices - but nothing is 100% obviously.
Do you have a Ohm-meter (DVM) or similar? If so you can measure resistance to identify the coils. Only pairs will conduct/give a reading and it will be more precise than feel by hand.
Feeling the torque by hand is also straight forward, you only need up to three wires to identify the pairs.
Wire1 -> Wire2 -> No firmer “detent force” felt connect Wire1 to Wire3.
If still no force is felt then Wire1 and Wire4 is one pair and Wire2/Wire3 is the other.
There is a third way to test using a std 3V LED.
Connect the LED to two of the wires and rotate the stepper, it will blink if its connected to a pair.