Stepper motor inteligent driver and controller

sergiu — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:50:48 +0000

Now, i'm sure that each one of you has some stepper motors laying around and wanted to test them at a given time but never had the time to build a driver or to buy one. I had the same problem until i decided that is the time to build that cnc machine that am dreaming about, for this i will need at least 3 stepper motors and of course 3 drivers... or one for 3 motors.
I decided to build a separate driver for each axis, will be easier to change if something goes wrong and will be more flexible.

The driver is composed from 2 parts, 2 separates modules the power module (ROAR HB power module) which contains the H bridges and the control module (ROAR MPP brain module) which will send signals to the power module.

The power module is pretty straight forward, will need 4 input pins, 4 output pins, and in pins for logic supply and power supply. As i was going to use the driver maybe in future robots also i decided to put some leds on the board 2 red led for each supply and 1 led for each input pin, so a total of 6 leds, i also added some pins for the cooling fan for the h bridge as the motor can suck a lot of power the bridge gets pretty hot.

Here is the full driver (the power module and the brain module, and a cooling fan)

full driver

Here is my final version of the power module a.k.a ROAR HB power module

ROAR HB power module

The huge advantage of this module is that it can use on a multitude of circuits all inputs and outputs are connected to pins. This can also be used to control a robot with 2 motors (control speed and direction for each one). All the plans and logic you need to build it is available on this web page, if you don't have the time, the mood or the tools to build it, you can post a comment and i'll build one for you on a very good price... 25$ let's say.

The construction pf the power module can be seen in detail on a diferent post. (i'm working on it right now)

Here is the components list for the ROAR HB power module :

1 * L298N (dual full h bridge)
6 * 1k resistor
12 * 1N5819 (fast diode, you can use any fast diode that can handle 30V/1A)
2 * red leds
4 * green leds
19 * pins
2 * jumpers

And finally here is the ROAR MPP brain module :

the driver ROAR MPP brain module

This module is also very usefull in lots of application because it's fully customizable, on this board is everything the pic needs to run, the pin B0 seted to be used as an interrupt... and a power led.

umkk.eu » pcb tutorial

Stepper motor inteligent driver and controller