RoadTest: Trinamic Stepper Motor Driver Kit + Motor
Author: ram123
Creation date:
Evaluation Type: Electromechanical
Did you receive all parts the manufacturer stated would be included in the package?: True
What other parts do you consider comparable to this product?: Allegro’s A4988, TI’s DRV8825, MPS MP6500, Toshiba’s TB67S279FTG, STMicro’s STSPIN820, ON Semiconductor’s AMIS-30543, STMicro's ULe N2003, L289N, are some of the bipolar stepper motor controller module ICs which are used to make stepping sizes of 8,32,128, 200. The driver are used to interface the stepper motor to the MCU and coding is to be return for the respective MCU board in IDE it will be complex process if any coding is missing we need to check and vary the pulse duration. If we need different speeds we need to reprogram or potentiometer interface should be coded again. The performance of the ICs are good but designing the coding will be time taking process and need to study about the ICs and interfacing pins. Using the TMC5161-EVAL-KIT by Trinamic is a good piece of hardware require not coding and IDE itself acts as GUI to control the speed and acceleration of the motor. I feel the Trinamic kit is more advantageous then the other driver modules. In this speed, position of the motor drive can be controlled and monitor in real-time.
What were the biggest problems encountered?: Their were no such difficulties experienced in my testing of the product. I feel it is working very effectively in what way I was expected be the motor driver and it can be controlled from IDE without coding.
Detailed Review:
Introduction:
Electrospinning:
Electrospinning is a fiber production method which uses electric force to draw charged threads of polymer solutions or polymer melts up to fiber diameters in the order of some hundred nanometers. Electrospinning shares characteristics of both electrospraying and conventional solution dry spinning of fibers. The standard laboratory setup for electrospinning consists of a spinneret connected to a high-voltage (5 to 50 kV) direct current power supply, a syringe pump, and a grounded collector. In the present review our concentration is on the design of Syringe pump with slow infusion. A syringe driver or syringe pump is a small infusion pump used to gradually administer small amounts of fluid to a patient or for use in chemical and biomedical research.
Applications of syringe pump include electrospinning, electrospraying, microdialysis, microfluidics, dispensing/dilution, organ/tissue perfusion and fluid circulation.
The syringe pump pumping should be done in slow process so that desired fiber diameter can be drawn from the system. One of the important thing to control is the syringe pump infusion, these can be carried out with various methods in those motor drawing is the simplest with the MCU. TMC5161-EVAL-KIT with the Trinamic IDE, driver module, MCU and Stepper motor use case drawn my attention to setup for the Electrospinning Infusion pump, in the present project same will be showcased.
TRINAMIC TMC5161-EVAL-KIT:
The TMC5161-EVAL-KIT is a set of one MCU board Landungsbrücke, an Eselsbrücke bridge board and one TMC5161-EVAL driver board. The Landungsbrücke is the connection between desktop computer and Trinamic’s Chip solutions. The Eselsbrücke is a connector board for Trinamic’s evaluation board system (Landungsbrücke and Motor driver board). This evaluation kit is suitable for use in laboratory automation, manufacturing, semiconductor handling, robotics, factory automation, test & measurement, life science, biotechnology and liquid handling.
Additional Information: Technical details, Datasheets, Documentation, Drawings, Unboxing, connections, examples, codes, Software and installation review can be learn from the below list.
Trinamic Stepper Motor Drive Kit -- RoadTest Review
Get Started With the TMC5130 EVAL KIT: How to make a stepper motor turn with Trinamic TMC5130 EVAL KIT
Project details:
TMC5161-EVAL-KIT is an easy design hardware kit with zero user coding and can operate with the TRINAMIC IDE. Hardware and Software are used to control the stepper motor so that it control the infusion pumping which are explained as follows:
Hardware Setup:
The hardware kit, power supply for the board, PC and connecting wires/cables are selected as shown in figure 1. 
The hardware kit is to connect to power supply eliminator of greater than 8v in our project it is adjusted to 10v is supplied to the driver module as shown in figure 2.
The complete setup with hardware, software and interfaces of the kit are shown in the below figure3.
Software: Trinamic IDE
The initial step followed is to interface the Evaluation kit to PC and open the Trinamic IDE so that the IDE display the Landungsbrücke in one of the COM port. Once the name and version are displayed on the IDE, it indicates the hardware is connected if the old version is setup during installation then latest firmware can be downloaded and updated from TMC5161-EVAL Evaluation Kit provided website. Figure 4 indicates the Screenshot image of Trinamic IDE with latest firmware installed and TMC5161-EVAL-KIT interfaced to PC.
In the next step after interfacing and detecting then in the control mode their will be an option called velocity mode for velocity control of motor. Velocity mode window will option with two dials with velocity, Acceleration and control functional buttons at the bottom as shown in Figure 5.The desired velocity and acceleration is set and click on the forward run button to rotate the Stepper motor in forward direction. The achieving velocity of the motor can be seen in the actual velocity box, once the process is completed it can be stopped, reversed in the same window.
The actual positions in terms of steps can be also controlled and visualized from the Position mode window which is the option in the control mode configuration tree and with as shown in figure 6.
The process can be terminated once it was completed but clicking on the stop button. In this way the stepper motor speed can be control so that the rotational motion can be converted into transnational motion by arranging the Screw Mechanism. In our project, 5cm displacement infuser is designed if more displacement is necessary it can be replaced with the respective length screwed rod. The displacement of 5cm makes to infuse a quantity of 5ml from the syringe.
The process is shown in the following video how the infusion is controlled by the stepper motor when interfaced to the TMC5161-EVAL-KIT.
Video:
Conclusion:
The TMC5161-EVAL-KIT can be used to stat the velocity of motor from 1ppt to thousand of ppt depending on the module which were are chosen for our applications. The slow process of displacement is really helping as of what my intention was to be. The slow process which I was set to infuse is 1ml for half-an-hour is readily achievable without coding the board in IDE by positioning the velocity dial and acceleration dial to specific numeric value.
After conducting experiment, I was very happy about the performance and functionality of the TMC5161-EVAL-KIT. It is suggestible in any applications in Industries (textile, food, milling, conveyor), Agriculture (setter), medical devices (Infusion pump), office devices (printers), robotics (arms), transportation vehicles (conveyors belts, fluid pumps, wipers), optical instruments (Telescopes, Microscopes, collimators), Atmospheric instruments (observatory), communication (Radar, Sonar,cellular), etc. My overall experience was good and valued for the price and performance of the TMC5161-EVAL-KIT and the motor.
My special Thanks for the Element14 and Trinamic for their support throughout the Roadtest.
