[Elecraft] OT - stepper motor question

[Vic Rosenthal]

I just know someone here can help me!  Please reply off-reflector.

I recently had the opportunity to take apart a big old Ricoh copy machine.  I 
recovered all kinds of neat mechanical and electrical parts, inclucing bunches 
of solenoids, motors, etc.

One of the coolest is a motor marked 55SPM-25D5A AX050032 30V 6.5 [ohms symbol]. 
  Google gets nothing on either of these numbers.

It has 6 wires coming out of it.  On the basis of this, and the 'coggy' feel 
when I turn the shaft, I think that it is a permanent-magnet unipolar stepper motor.

I want to build a remotely tuned very QRO L-network antenna tuner (I already 
have a large rotary inductor and capacitor).  What I want to do is use this 
stepper to turn the capacitor to preset positions.  Once the capacitor is set, I 
will be able to drive the inductor with a simple geared motor and just tune for 
lowest SWR.

Reading material on stepper motor control systems has my head spinning!  Is 
there some kind of simple off-the-shelf controller that I can get that will do 
most of the work?  What I would REALLY like would be to just turn a local knob 
to adjust the capacitor (sort of like the way a selsyn acts), but there may be 
other approaches.

-- 
73,
Vic, K2VCO
Fresno CA
http://www.qsl.net/k2vco