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EK-TM4C123GXL: Driving a TB6600 stepper driver

Part Number: EK-TM4C123GXL
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: DRV8833

Hi,

I am trying to drive a TB6600 stepper driver beginning with the TI Stepper driver example code which produces the A and B outputs correctly. The TB6600 has effectively only one input called PUL+. Can I use just one of the outputs from the example program (A+ say) and connect it to PUL+?

Thank you.

  • Hi,

      Which TI stepper driver example did you use? Is it this one? https://www.ti.com/tool/TIDM-TM4C123STEPPERMOTOR

  • Thanks Charles,

    I'm pretty sure it is. I found it a bit hard to find out but the manifest says:

    Driving a Stepper Motor with TM4C MCU Manifest 08-25-2015 and the program starts off with

    project0.c - Example to demonstrate minimal TivaWare setup

  • Hi William,

      The example was developed to drive the DRV8833 H-bridge motor driver with its AIN1 and AIN2 inputs. I'm not familiar with the TB6600 stepper motor driver using one single input. The way is for you to reference the example and see if you can adapt to your driver. Since the TB6600 is a Arduino stepper motor, I hope if you do some Google search and find some example code for it. 

  • Hi Charles,

    Yes I realise that my driver is not a TI product so I thought the question might be a bit out of the park. However I will persevere and with a bit of experimentation make it work (hopefully). Thanks for looking into it anyway.

    William

  • Just for the record it turned out that it was relatively easy to modify the example code for use with the single input TB6600 stepper driver

  • Greetings,

    You may have noted that your chosen device has a power stage which has a (notably) high resistance.   (~400mΩ often noted as RDS (on))

    Should your Stepper Motor prove 'under-powered' - that level of power stage resistance is almost certain to generate destructive heat - especially when that motor (or its higher performing replacement) is operated at higher speeds and over (reasonable) time-durations.

    As a comparison - Modern, individual "Power N-FETs" are available which have RDS(on) values down below 0.5mΩ!"   (Yes - that IS 1/2 a milli-ohm - nearly 1000x lower than your hybrid)

    The integrated Stepper Driver chosen (clearly) trades 'design speed & convenience' for power efficiency - and will prove unable to properly support larger & more powerful Motors.     (those almost certain to 'ping your radar' downstream...)     You are advised to consider mounting a temperature sensor to that stepper driver hybrid - and to employ a properly sized & multi-finned heat-sink...   

  • Hello cb1_mobile,

    Thank you for your advice on possible thermal problems. The present application is low power (2 or 3 amps at 24V) so I don’t think there will be a heat problem but will bear it in mind for future projects.