Driver over heating?

Support Motor controllers/drivers and motors
1

hello
I have recently bought A4983 stepper motor drive. It is controlled with the arduino mega. Everything seems to work well but I have an interesting problem. The motor seems to stall and stop working very quickly . What is funny is that when I touch the chip with my finger, the motor starts working again…
It works when i touch it, until it is too hot to touch… i tried touching the chip with something else ( screwdriver)
and the motor doesn’t turn… i think it has something to do with the chip heating…
i placed a cooling fan near it and this did not work as well…
Any ideas?

ps. the motor is a Vexta Stepper motor (model PK266-02A) and should draw around 2A and 20V…

thanks!

2

Hello.

If it is a heating problem, you should be able to verify that quickly by lowering the current setting so the chip doesn’t get as hot. I’m a bit skeptical that is the problem, though, since the unit would be burning hot before it would shut down, and it sounds like you’re able to touch it while it’s suspected to be in a thermal shutdown state.

In general, you will need heat sinking to get to 2A.

- Jan