H-bridge DC motor PWM drive modes

Robotics and electronics discussion Software and microcontrollers
1

Can someone point out an authoritative resource that lists the details of all known PWM drive modes used to drive a DC brushed motor using an h-bridge?

I have to design a h-bridge circuit (which I have never done before) that will drive a DC brushed motor to about 30 Amps.
The motor needs to quickly accelerate, decelerate, and reverse direction.
I have a good start on the actual electronics, but am running into some design decisions that are impacted by the choice of PWM drive mode.

Using the web to learn more about this subject (having to perform the usual task of trying to sort out the good from the bad information : ), I ran across the “H-Bridge Secrets” site (modularcircuits.tantosonline.com … e-secrets/) and this site.

The “Secrets” site lists these modes -
Sign-Magnitude Drive, Lock Anti-Phase Drive, and Asynchronous Sign-magnitude Drive

In various areas on this site, I found these modes -
Sign-magnitude (drive-brake), Sign-magnitude (drive-coast), Variable braking (brake-coast), Locked-antiphase

I thought these were all the modes until by chance I ran across -
Phase Correct / Centre - Symmetric / Center Aligned / Symmetric PWM

Is there an accurate table / spreadsheet out there that details all the known modes (including alternate names) along with the pros / cons, typical usage, important equations,…?

Thank you,
TonyS

2

I’m somewhat surprised that so many have viewed this post yet none have posted a reply.

I had hoped that a Pololu employee would have been able to provide a nice “white paper” summary of all known DC brush motor drive modes.

Oh well, thanks anyway,
TonyS

3

An H-bridge DC motor driver is actually a fairly complicated thing to do.

Your DIY version should be feasible so long as you don’t expect too high PWM frequency (that can be electrically tricky) and you use high quality mosfets that can deal with the current without having to parallel many. The best design tips you can get is to look at Pololu’s drivers and see what they did on their schematic.

But in reality that’s a big project to do with any sophistication. That is partly why people didnt respond. You just asked “How do I do this fairly complicated really big project without obvious knowledge of the principles?” I think you will learn a lot from googling DIY brushed motor drivers. There is a lot of information out there.

Personally I’m not at the level to do it any better, and would suggest you won’t save money over using one of Pololu’s drivers. I’d only make my own driver if I was doing something relatively simple, like 500hz driving of peltier modules, or some resistive load.