Hello, I am looking to power a series of 7 stepper motor-driven pumps for a small project, with a raspberry pi. Current specs for the motors are: Rated Voltage: 1.76V, Rated Current 1.1A/Phase, Winding Resistance: 1.6 Ohms. The specs can be seen under the “BA” model of pump listed on page 7 here:
The power supply I have in mind is 24V, and 4.2A. I’m currently looking at the DRV8880 as a driver for this project, but I admit, am new to understanding stepper motor drivers. I was wondering if there was another driver that might be better suited for the application? Additionally, I was curious- Outside of a breadboard, is there a clean way to chain together 7 of these types of drivers?
Thanks for your time!
Tom
Hello, Tom.
The DRV8880 carrier might be okay, though it is slightly underpowered. In our testing it could deliver approximately 1 A per phase continuously without a heat sink or forced air flow, but your motor is rated for 1.1A per phase. We have a few drivers that can handle higher currents; you can see our full selection on our stepper motor drivers category page.
However, almost all of those drivers are controlled through a STEP/DIR interface, and Raspberry Pi boards are typically not good at timing-sensitive applications like generating low level stepping signals, so you might also consider using our more versatile Tic Stepper Motor Controllers which can be configured over USB and commanded through several higher level control interfaces such as TTL serial, I2C, and USB. You can also daisy-chain Tics when you are using the serial or I2C interfaces, so you would not need as many pins to control seven of them from your Raspberry Pi since they can all be connected to the same bus.
As for connecting your stepper motor drivers or controllers, a breadboard might be okay for limited testing, but we generally do not recommend them for applications involving motors since they are not designed to handle high currents. The cleanest way to connect them depends on your application and what parts/tools you have available, but you might consider just routing wires directly to the drivers or using a protoboard or PCB to make your connections (one that is intended to handle an appropriate amount of current).
- Patrick
Thanks so much Patrick! I found a board to allow for the extra current and am going to get one of the TIC boards to try out- the videos look promising.
Appreciate the assistance, and take care.
-Tony
