The technology for stepper drive that can achieve accurate motion in the hydraulic field has always been urgently needed in the industry. This paper proposes a hydraulic stepper drive based on five high speed on/off valves and two miniature plunger cylinders. The stepper drive discretizes the continuous flow medium into fixed small steps through the miniature plunger cylinder and realizes the state control of the drive through the logic action of the high speed on/off valve. This paper improves the current stepper drive and establishes a mathematical model to analyze the error of the drive and calculate the position of the actuator. In addition, through simulation research, the performance parameters such as the single-step step characteristic and pressure characteristic of the stepper drive are studied. The results show that, compared with the technology of current stepper drive, this stepper drive can effectively remove the "post step" phenomenon, greatly improve the stepper accuracy of the stepper drive, and have a more excellent performance.
Keywords: high speed on/off valve; hydraulic stepper drive; miniature plunger cylinders; simulation research.