Hi, JD.
Implementing some acceleration probably would help you get to higher speeds. Unfortunately, we do not have any example code for the High-Power Stepper Motor Driver 36v4 that accelerates the motor. You could try modifying the BasicSteppingSPI example from our Arduino library by adding a for loop that decreases delay between steps at the start of each stepper movement. If you run into issues, you can post your code, and I will take a look.
Rather than using the step function, you could supply step signals directly to the driver’s STEP and DIR pins. This is what the BasicStepping example in our library does, so I recommend looking at what that program does to step the motor. More details on that interface are given in the DRV8711 datasheet which we link to from the resources tab of the carrier’s product page.
In addition to adding acceleration, this post has other tips for increasing the top speed of your motor. If you have a datasheet for your motor, you should also look at the pull-out torque curve in it to get an idea of what speeds are possible for your motor.
-Claire