Hi,
I have five A4988 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier, Black Edition on my ARDUINO board. One was dead (checked it with mutual position change). Bought two new green boards. When installing the new green board, motor is doing weird, turns in the opposite direction and stutter. I changed the pot for current control to left and right > Did not give any change.
On the catalog page “Motion Control Modules >> Stepper Motor Drivers >> A4988 Stepper Motor Driver Carriers>>” is mentioned “The Black Edition and the green board are interchangeable.”
What could be the problem?
Hello.
Just to clarify, our green and black A4988 stepper motor driver carriers do have the same pinout, but the black edition uses a 4-layer PCB for better thermal performance which allows it to deliver approximately 20% more current than the green version (which uses a two layer PCB).
What motors and power supply are you attempting to use the drivers with, and what are you setting the VREF voltage to? Can you post some pictures of your setup that show how you have everything connected?
- Patrick
Hi Patrick,
The setup is an existing German REPRAP X400CE 3D Printer. The setup is still standard as purchased. On top of the Arduino 2560 Mega sits the RAMPS 1.4.2 board with 5 Pololu A4988 plugged in.
Steppers are NEMA 17 (FL42STH47-1304AC).
I did not change the VREF voltage. For adjusting the amps I followed the manual instructions of the X400CE.
I want to point out that using the black A4988 stepper motor driver carriers everything works fine.
Bart
Adjusting the A4988 driver’s current limit using the board’s potentiometer and the VREF voltage is required for the board to operate properly. Failing to do so could potentially damage your driver or the connected stepper motor. I recommend setting the current limit equal to the per-phase rated current of your motor as a starting point (as long as that does not exceed the 1A continuous current value we specify for that board). You can find instructions for doing this in the driver’s product page description under the “Current limiting” header.
If you think you have set the current limit correctly, could you tell me what VREF is set to? I could not find documentation for your stepper motor, so could you also post a datasheet or a product page link for that?
- Patrick
