A4988 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier

Official Pololu 2A stepper driver for driving stepper motors in your 3D printer

This breakout board for Allegro’s A4988 microstepping bipolar stepper motor driver features adjustable current limiting, over-current and over-temperature protection, and five different microstep resolutions (down to 1/16-step). It operates from 8 V to 35 V and can deliver up to approximately 1 A per phase without a heat sink or forced air flow (it is rated for 2 A per coil with sufficient additional cooling). This board ships with 0.1″ male header pins included but not soldered in.

Overview

This product is a carrier board or breakout board for Allegro’s A4988 DMOS Microstepping Driver with Translator and Overcurrent Protection; we therefore recommend careful reading of the A4988 datasheet before using this product. This stepper motor driver lets you control one bipolar stepper motor at up to 2 A output current per coil (see the Power Dissipation Considerations section below for more information). Here are some of the driver’s key features:

•     Simple step and direction control interface
•     Five different step resolutions: full-step, half-step, quarter-step, eighth-step, and sixteenth-step
•     Adjustable current control lets you set the maximum current output with a potentiometer, which lets you use voltages above your stepper motor’s rated voltage to achieve higher step rates
•     Intelligent chopping control that automatically selects the correct current decay mode (fast decay or slow decay)
•     Over-temperature thermal shutdown, under-voltage lockout, and crossover-current protection
•     Short-to-ground and shorted-load protection