Lin Engineering Unveils TMC428 Stepper Motor Controller

Lin Engineering Inc. (Santa Clara, CA), a designer of step motors, unveiled its a miniaturized high-performance stepper motor controller, the TMC428, which controls up to three two-phase stepper motors. All motors can operate independently. The TMC428 allows up to 6-bit micro-step resolution individually selectable for each motor. Once initialized, it performs all real-time critical tasks autonomously based on target positions and velocities, which may be altered on-the-fly. The inexpensive micro controller, together with the TMC428, forms a complete motion control system.

The micro controller is free to do application-specific interfacing and high-level control functions. Communication with the micro controller, and with one to three daisy-chained stepper motor drivers, take place via two separate four-wire serial peripheral interfaces. The TMC428 directly connects to SPI™ smart power stepper motor drivers.