System-On-Chip Architecture Raises Performance Of Microstepping Motor Driver Designs

Focus:

In this article, a unique motor-drive architecture for microstepping is presented. This architecture includes a novel approach to driving stepper motors based on voltage-mode control and an advanced motion engine controlled through an SPI interface. The novel voltage-mode approach removes the need for sensing the motor’s phase currents and eliminates the special efforts normally required in phase-current control systems to reach acceptable performance. In the end, this control method allows high microstepping resolution with an extremely reduced torque ripple. This control system has been integrated in a single-chip device, called dSPIN (the L6470), which also includes an advanced logic core that implements a set of positioning and speed commands, stall detection, as well as protection features. In this article, the key features and operation of dSPIN including its voltage-mode control technique are described and experimental results are presented.

What you’ll learn:

• How to understand operation and benefits of the voltage mode control technique used by dSPIN to control microstepping of stepper motors

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Author & Publication:

Enrico Poli, Vincenzo Marano, and Giovanni Frezza, STMicroelectronics, Agrate, Italy and Schaumburg, Ill., How2Power Today, Jan 27 2012

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