New Industry Products

Credit-Card-Sized Motion Control Dev Boards for Robotics and Automation

November 26, 2018 by Paul Shepard

Following the successful TMCM-1110 StepRocker™ and TMCM-1111 StepRocker™ Servo, TRINAMIC Motion Control GmbH & Co. KG announce their new StepRocker™ boards with StealthChop™. Just like the first members of the StepRocker™ family, the TMCM-1211 and TMCM-1316 are open-source single-axis motor controller/driver modules for 2-phase bipolar stepper motors.

Their RS485 and USB interfaces make them not only designed for robotics, manufacturing, lab or factory automation and other applications, but also suited for evaluating technology and for those experimenting with a stepper motor for the first time.

Michael Randt, Founder and CEO of Trinamic explains the addition of these two boards to the company's portfolio: "We understand that development times are getting increasingly shorter. To make sure this doesn't affect the quality of the system, engineers need to have building blocks that are easy to set up. You don't want to spend days writing complicated software of tuning electronic components.

"With these latest additions to our StepRocker™ product family, we offer engineers exactly that: Reliable building blocks that are easy to use and offer all the Trinamic technologies needed to stay at the forefront of their industry, including StealthChop™," Randt concluded.

The TMCM-1211 StepRocker™ is a single axis motor controller/driver board for 2-phase bipolar stepper motors.

Besides StealthChop2™, both boards have all the functions one can expect from Trinamic's products. The TMCM-1211 contains the motion controller and motor driver TMC5160 in combination with an ARM Coretex-M4™ processor, while the TMCM-1316 has the additional TMC4361 high-end chip. As such, the TMCM-1316 offers S-shaped and linear ramping profiles and closed-loop operation when using an external encoder.

Available from December through Trinamic's distribution channels, both fully functional development platforms allow for advanced stepper motor control with StealthChop2™, StallGuard2™, CoolStep™, and SpreadCycle™. It's easy to set up using the RS485 or USB interface in combination with Trinamic's TMCL™ for remote or standalone operation, with a memory for up to 1024 TMCL™ commands.

Features and benefits:

  • Single axis controller/driver for 2-phase bipolar stepper motor
  • +10- to +30-Vdc supply voltage
  • Up to 5.7A RMS motor current
  • RS485 & USB interface
  • Multi-purpose inputs and outputs
  • Open-source TMCL-Lite library C for development of own application code
  • SixPoint™ ramps (TMCM-1211)
  • S-shaped, linear and SixPoint™ ramps (TMCM-1316)
  • Closed-loop operation with external encoder (TMCM-1316)