What is more common is to replace geared brushed DC motors with a stepper motor in applications such as pumps, lab equipment and similar applications where positional accuracy can be improved vastly by using a stepper motor and stepper motor controller.
Many applications were addressed in years gone by by using a geared DC motor and timing as a means of dosing and measuring – however developments in stepper motor controller technology such as on the ZD10 Stepper Motor Controller means that huge advances have been made in the accuracy, flexibility and performance of such systems.
Of equal importance, the cost of such technology has dropped considerably in recent years, making advanced performance options affordable to a broad range of applications.
Whereas 10 or 20 years ago a programmable stepper motor controller such as the ZD10 would have cost £1000+, these days it is much less.
The result of this trend is that many people and companies have started to look at replacing geared brushed DC motors with stepper motor controllers as a means of improving the performance of the system and also as a way of adding more features.