Working on my laser cutter which has a ~0.1mm dot size which means 254 DPI and a standard 1.8° nema17/34 stepper with 1 full step on the stepper is ~0.5mm of travel so 4 microstepping would seem to be good enough resolution. And that’s when I found this torque listing and now at 8 micro steps it has less than 20% of it’s holding torque. Holding torque is what’s going to get you to a position and hold you there. For 3D printers I typically see 16 microstepping used which also seems like overkill but in CNC milling, there’s more metal to move around and it’s ‘eating’ stuff too so I’m curious if anyone knows what configuration is used on the commerical DIY machines?
Microsteps/full step Holding Torque/Microstep
1 100.00%
2 70.71%
4 38.27%
8 19.51%
16 9.80%
32 4.91%
64 2.45%
128 1.23%
256 0.61%