Lin Engineering Offers StallGuard for TMC246/TMC249 ICs

Lin Engineering Inc. (Santa Clara, CA), a designer and specialist of step motors, in conjunction with the Trinamic Microchips GmbH (Germany), introduced its new StallGuard™ technology, which is capable of sensorless stall detection without the need for an encoder. The new technology is available in the TMC246 and TMC249 driver chips, which makes them suitable for drives where high reliability is desired.

The TMC246 is a dual full-bridge driver IC for bi-polar step motor control. The user is given the choice to operate at high temperatures of up to 105 °C, or at high currents of up to 1.5 A/phase. The device can be controlled via serial interface or via analog/digital input signals. Short-circuit, temperature, under-voltage and over-voltage protection are all integrated.

The TMC249 is the high-current version of the TMC246. It is able to support up to 75 Vdc/10 A set by external MOSFETs. The drive chip can also be used for uni-polar step motors. Only four external PMOS transistors are required for uni-polar operation.