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How does A4988 work?
The A4988 driver allows microstepping by allowing intermediate step locations. This is achieved by energizing the coils with intermediate current levels. For example, if you choose to drive NEMA 17 having 1.8° or 200 steps per revolution in quarter-step mode, the motor will give 800 microsteps per revolution.
Can a4988 drive NEMA 23?
I’ve used the a4988 to drive nema 17 stepper motors, but the nema 23 draws 2.8A per phase. Since the a4988 can only handle 2A max, I need something beefier to drive some nema 23’s.
Is the a4988 a bipolar motor or unipolar motor?
If you do a quick search, you’ll see that this motor comes rarely with the A4988 as a driver. If you read thoroughly the previous reference you might see why: our stepper is a unipolar motor while the A4988 is designed to drive bipolar motors, so we’ll have to hack a bit our motor !
Do you need a 5VDC power supply for a a4988?
In short, the pink and yellow wires need to be crossed over. The spec. sheet states that an A4988 needs > 8VDC power supply for your motor, i.e. you may not be able to run a 5VDC power supply for driving 5V 28BYJ-48 motors. You do not need to disconnect the 28BYJ-48 red wire to run it in bipolar stepper mode.
Can a a4988 be used as a driver?
Therefore using the A4988 makes us save 2 of our precious controller outputs (and if you like working with the micro:bit as I do then those outputs are precious…) ! But there is more ! Being able to drive the motor by just giving the steps as high impulses, gives us the possibility to drive the motor with a simple PWM.
Is the a4988 compatible with a stepper motor?
If you read thoroughly the previous reference you might see why: our stepper is a unipolar motor while the A4988 is designed to drive bipolar motors, so we’ll have to hack a bit our motor ! To make your motors compatible with the motor driver simply take the red wire out of the white connector.