2010-04-21

TRINAMIC TMC 262 coolStep™ driver makes stepper motors ‘green’

Trinamic, the industry leader in embedded motion control systems, today unveiled the industry’s first energy-efficient stepper motor driver. The TMC262, first IC of a family of new stepper drivers,  implements Trinamic’s coolStep™ technology, which intelligently manages the amount of drive current to the motor, so that the motor easily handles the load but does not consume extra power or generate excess heat.

Stepper motors are widely used in consumer and industrial products, from low-cost printers to high-precision medical and laboratory instrumentation. They offer precise motion control but are not very power-efficient. Designers of biotech and medical equipment struggle to keep the heat of conventional stepper motors from damaging biological and chemical samples. Trinamic’s TMC262 can reduce motor heat dissipation by up to 80%, making the equipment more sensitive and more reliable.

Portable equipment benefits as well. Conventional stepper motors consume power even when not turning. The TMC262 reduces this to an absolute minimum, thus extending battery life.

A key advantage of stepper motors is that the designer can implement position feedback without external encoders or position sensors. However, in conventional designs this imposes a penalty, as the motor must always draw the maximum required current to avoid step losses. However, maximum current is not always needed, and so is wasteful.

This is where TRINAMIC’s new coolStep technology comes in: The TMC26x family uses an integrated, high-resolution load measurement sensor. Using this information, motor current is accurately adjusted to meet the load, but without excess overdrive. In other words, the motor gets exactly as much energy as it needs.

The unique feature of coolStep technology is that no external sensor is necessary. In addition, the TMC262 can measure actual motor load, or torque. This information can be used by a microprocessor to detect potential or actual problems, such as a stuck mechanism.

The TMC262 further improves motor performance by building on technology proven in other Trinamic devices – microstep motor control. Each motor step is divided into 256 microsteps, for a total of 51,200 steps per revolution for a standard hybrid stepper motor. This smooths overall motion. An internal interpolator increases resolution even if the external control circuitry is only capable of supplying 16 times microstepping pulses.

The TMC262 drives loads up to 6 amps and up to 60 volts, via external transistors. It comes in a compact 5 * 5mm² QFN package and can be driven by either a step/direction interface, or via SPI.

Samples and an evaluation board are available at MEV now.

 

Your Contact:

Wiho Herkenhoff
Phone: +49 (0) 5424 234030
Email: wherkenhoff@mev-elektronik.com

 

 

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