I've just gone through about 4 different sets of chips and for me the clear winner is the A3982. It runs cool, drives smoothly, isn't finicky and so far has not failed. The only thing weird about it is the enable line is inverted, but I put a 4049 on the stepper board jumper selectable so I could invert both the enable and direction lines for use in different systems. DougM On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Josh Koffman wrote: > Hi all. The last time I designed a stepper motor into a project was a > long time ago. I used a ULN2803 darlington array and did the stepping > in software. It worked ok. > > I've just started looking into steppers again, and it seems there are > a bunch of new chips on the market that take care of a lot of the work > for you. I'm happy to get one chip that will handle generating steps > as well as handling the higher power to the windings. That will just > make things easier on me both in the software and hardware. Setting a > pin to choose the direction and then just sending pulses seems quite > simple. > > However there seem to be a bewildering array of these chips out there. > I'd love to standardize on a chip that will drive unipolar and bipolar > motors and doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Something easily available > at Digikey would be nice too. The Toshiba TB6560 > ( > http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=TB6560AHQO-ND > ) > seems ok for bipolars. Is there something out there than would handle > both? These aren't huge motors so I would say anything up to an amp or > two would be good. > > What do you use, and why that particular chip? > > Thanks! > > Josh > -- > A common mistake that people make when trying to design something > completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete > fools. > -Douglas Adams > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist