These small stepper drivers are really common on 3D printers. 2A is more then enough. My printer has 5 small steppers and routinely printes at 60mm per second. The new stepper drivers are much nicer because they output nicer analog-looking waveforms with sloth sine waves. The motors are cooler and make a lot less noise when running.
Those chips are getting better. The last driver I bought from "Steppers Online" was made by Leadshine and is the digital kind. It is MUCH improved and I notice they replaced the big aluminum heat sink with a plastic part. What has happed the is the on-resistance of MOSFETS is so small that there is no heat to sink so the big integrated heat sink is gone but performances much better. I think the newer digital control has something to do with reducing heat also. I just happen have a racing quadcopter drone on my bench right now. Mine uses four 18 amp three phase motors. The motors, the frame and all the computers that make it fly total up to 350 grams weight. I just switched from analog to full digital motor control and the noise and heat was dramatically improved. I can swap it back and forth to use either analog or digital protocol and the difference is obvious. No heatsinks in on this thing, but of course there is pretty extreme air-blast cooling. My theory is that the smother output of the digital controller has lower impedance through the motor coil vs. the old square waves made by the older controllers. So we see less heat for the same motor torque. Don't discount using the small controllers. My printer uses two stepper motors running in parallel on the Z-axis. I get twice the torque this way each has it's own Pololu-style driver. > > > https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12859 > > > > which admittedly will only do 2A, even if you stick a heatsink to the > > top of the chip. But at least it responds to each step input given. > > (I'm not sure if that's the Allegro chip which Gene shies clear of, > > though.) > > > > Erik > > > Thats a newer chip, and I might even have data on it as I have an allegro > databook hiding on the shelf above me as I sit here in the dark, its not > quite 5Am here. But I've never seen or used it, too small to interest > me. > > -- > Cheers, Gene Heskett > -- > "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: > soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." > -Ed Howdershelt (Author) > Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most > engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > -- Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
