A4988 Stepper Motor

A4988 Module designed as a compact-sized, low-cost breakout board for Allegro’s A4988 Stepper Motor Driver. It offers numerous features such as adjustable current limiting, over-temperature, and over-current protection. It supports five different stepping resolutions and provides a wide operating voltage range from 8 volts to 35 volts. The A4988 is one of the prominent complete micro-stepping motor drivers with an inbuilt converter for ease of operation.  These are designed specifically to operate bipolar stepper motors in full-, half-, quarter-, eighth-, and sixteenth-step modes, with an output drive capacity of up to 35 V and ±2 A. The A4988 Motor Driver has the ability to operate in Slow or Mixed decay modes by the presence of a fixed off-time current regulator

The inbuilt converter/translator performs the key to the easy implementation of the A4988. By simply inputting one pulse to the STEP input, drives the motor one micro-step. This motor driver does not consist of any phase sequence tables, high-frequency control lines, or complex interface to program. The A4988 motor driver is a perfect solution for applications where a complex microprocessor is unavailable or is overburdened. During stepping operation, the A4988 automatically selects the current decay mode, Slow or Mixed with the help of the chopping control.

Whereas in the  Mixed decay mode, the initial device is set to a fast decay for a proportion of the fixed off-time, then shifts to a slow decay for the remainder of the off-time. As a result, the Mixed decay current control cause reduced audible motor noise, increased step accuracy, and reduced power dissipation. Moreover, it provides internal synchronous rectification control circuitry, thereby improving the pulse width modulation (PWM) power consumption during operation. Finally, the Internal circuit protection offers thermal shutdown with hysteresis, under-voltage lockout (UVLO), and crossover current protection. Don’t need special power-up sequencing.