I recently purchased several SN754410 drivers and I think I made a mistake in purchasing them. I am wanting to drive 2 bi-polar stepper motors (NEMA 23) with two separate drivers. I was doing some research and L298N drivers came up. Would the SN754410 drivers be okay at 9v and 12v power? Would it be better to purchase L298N in my case?
Here are some specs of the NEMA 23 bi-polar stepper motor:
Step Angle: 1.8 deg
Voltage: 7.8 V DC
Current/phase: 0.7 A/phase
Resistance/phase: 11.2 ohm/phase
Inductance/phase: 21.6 mH/phase
Recommended Power supply: 24Vdc, min 1.4A (as stated on the motor spec sheet)
Any help on this issue would be great. Also, if there is another dual full bridge driver that would be ideal in this case, please list it. I have seen EasyMotorDriver from SparkFun and those things are pretty pricey for me. I noticed that when I used a SN754410 with the motor, it would heat up after a while making it hot to touch but have yet to melt/shut down/or otherwise cause the motor to stop functioning properly. A site recommended using a fan and I'll be fine... I need more input than a couple sources -_-
I also saw the recommended drivers to go with the motor on the pdf file but I'm just looking for the driver chip, not all the stuff that comes with and not worth $100+.
It depends on how hard you want to push the motors. If you're OK with the 754410 getting hot then you can keep using them. You didn't mention what voltage you applied when you ran your tests.
If you want greater performance from your motors (higher torque or faster rotation for a given torque) then the 24V 1.4A supply recommended is the way to go, and a motor driver that "steals" as little power from the motors as possible. The L298 will be better than the 754410 at this. There are better solutions, but will be more expensive and you seem fairly cost sensitive at this point (if you don't want to buy an off-the-shelf motor driver).
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The Gadget Shield: accelerometer, RGB LED, IR transmit/receive, light sensor, potentiometers, pushbuttons
Sorry, I stated them as questions but I applied 9v and 12v to test the motor as well as 7.5v.
Well if the 'better solution' is under 25 bucks, let me know and I'll consider it.
The motor in my situation will act as a wheel to transport a load on top of it. The load is roughly 3-6 lbs. I've only tested 1-2lbs because I haven't finished making my transportation/device.
The "best" solution in terms of price/performance is a do-it-yourself H-bridge made out of MOSFET's and MOSFET drivers. OK, you really need 2 of them, one for each stepper coil. That's also the most work. Otherwise, a DMOS driver chip like the TI DRV8801 or ST's 6xxx series (I can't find the exact device I'm thinking of....www.st.com is down at the moment) is going to have less power dissipation at 0.7A than an L298.
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The Quick Shield: breakout all 28 pins to quick-connect terminals