06 May 2011
The A3981 and A4980 from Allegro MicroSystems Europe are two new automotive-grade programmable stepper-motor driver ICs
that are designed to operate bipolar stepper motors in full, half, quarter and sixteenth-step modes at up to 28V and ±750mA in automotive, consumer and industrial applications.
Both devices offer a single-chip solution with internal digital timing circuitry and a built-in translator for ease of operation. The A3981 can be controlled by simple step and direction inputs, or through an SPI-compatible serial port that also can be used to program many of the integrated features and to read diagnostic information.
The A4980 is identical to the A3981 except for a low-voltage operation feature which will allow the IC to run down to a load supply voltage of 3.3V (compared with 7V on the A3981). Such a low voltage operation may be necessary in some automotive applications where the battery voltage during cold cranking can drop to a critically low level.
Bookmark with:
