For some time I’ve been wondering about micro-stepping. It would seem that if you stop at a microstep position that you’re going to either be PWM-ing the windings or driving them in the linear region of the drive transistors. In either case I’d think the power dissipation in the drive devices would be substantially elevated. Add in the reduced holding torque from partially driving the relevant windings and it has seemed like a bad idea.

I just recently read an article that suggested that the main value from microstepping is smoother motion (and at least implied that you’d generally not want to stop unless you were at a full or half step location. That I can buy…you’ll not be spending extended amounts of time in the linear region of the drive transistors. You effectively approximate a smooth hand-off between windings and use gear ratio to manage increased resolution (of higher torque) as needed.