SS0905USB board

SS0905USB board, showing connector option LLL

The SS0905USB board is a customer-requested variant of our SS0705USB board. It measures 1 inch by 3.8 inches (as shown), and hence is appropriate for some space-constrained mounting requirements. Note that, unlike the SS0705USB product, this board uses an MTA-100 or screw-terminal connector for its USB communications (instead of the more typical USB-B connector): you will probably have to build your own USB cable!

The unit is a complete Unipolar dual stepper motor controller system. The board is very convenient to any hobbyist who has an old floppy disk drive hanging around (the 5 1/4 inch drives tended to have 12 volt unipolar motors, which this unit can handle quite well), and can be trivially controlled by other microprocessing systems (such as the Parallax Basic Stamp product line). Since it takes over the issues of timing, other operations can be performed by your computer while the new motion is completing.

Please view information about our BiStep products, if you need to control Bipolar stepper motors, or motors which require more than 0.5 amps/winding of drive current.

The SS0905USB includes the capability of driving one or two 0.5 Amp 4 pole 7.5 to 15 volt Unipolar stepper motors at a time when used with a single power supply. As with the BiStep products, it also supports a dual power supply feature, wherein the motors use a separate supply from the logic circuits; in this mode, up to a 26 volt power supply may be used for the motors. You will want to review the calculating motor current faq in order to determine the current requirements for your motor.

Double Current Mode: The GenStepper firmware allows you to run one motor (instead of two) at double the rated current of the board! For the SS0905USB board, which can handle two 0.5-Amp motors, then that board can now be configured by you to handle one 1-amp motor instead. Please review the motor connections faq for more information.

This board may be optionally configured to act as a serial router for our product line, through use of the SerRoute firmware option. This option replaces the stepper motor control with serial routing of up to nine boards, up to 8 relay, and up to 4 TTL input operations. Please click here for more information about the serial routing firmware.

Similarly, this board may be optionally configured to operate in a NC (numerically controlled) process environment, through use of the NCStepper firmware option. This firmware tightly links the two motors together, providing for easy "exact straight line" and simplified arc/circle drawing. Please click here for more information about the NCStepper firmware.

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Key Benefits

The SS0905USB has the following key capabilities when using the GenStepper firmware:

Up to two Unipolar 4-pole stepper motors may be independently controlled at one time.

Each motor may draw up to 0.5 amps per winding.

If only a single motor is connected to the board, and the GenStepper firmware revision is 1.59 or later, then you can configure the board and wire the motor for double current mode. This allows you to handle a single motor with up to 1 amp/winding with this product!

Limit switches may be used to automatically request motion stop of either motor in either direction.

Rates of 1 to 62,500 microsteps per second are supported.

Step rates are changed by linearly ramping the rates; the rate of change is independently programmed for each motor, and can be from 1 to 62,500 microsteps per second per second.

All motor coordinates and rates are expressed in programmable microstep units of 1/2 to 1/64 of a full step. Once the base step size is selected, changing stepping modes between half, full and micro does not change any other value other than which winding pairs may be driven at the same time.

Motor coordinates are maintained as 32 bit signed values, and thus have a range of –2,147,483,647 through +2,147,483,647.

Both GoTo and Slew actions are fully supported.

Four modes of stepping the motor are supported:

	Half steps (alternates 1 winding and two windings enabled at a time),
	Full power full steps (2 windings enabled at a time)
	Half power full steps (1 winding enabled at a time)
	Near-constant-current microsteps (each from 1/64 to 1/2 of a full step) ¹

A TTL "busy" signal is available, which can be used to see if the motors are still moving. Note that this information is also available from the serial communications subsystem.

Simple control of the motors may be done by switch closure: i.e., each motor can be told to slew left or right, or to stop by simply grounding some input lines. Similarly, the rate of motion can be controlled via stepping through a standard set of rates via grounding another input.

Complete control of the motors, including total monitoring of current conditions, is available through the USB serial connection.

An additional mode is available which allows an external computer to directly generate step sequences on the motor control lines. Up to 62,500 microsteps per second may be requested.

Runs off of a single user-provided 7.5 to 15 volt DC power supply. May also be configured using a split supply, wherein the motor runs off of a 5 to 26 volt DC power supply, while the logic circuit runs off of a 7.5 to 15 volt DC supply.

Connector options exist to allow use of MTA-100 locking SIP header connectors or terminal block (screw terminal) connectors for most external connections.

Theoretically, an unlimited number of boards can be controlled via one serial line, if the SerRoute firmware is used on some of our boards to route to serial data.

¹ The SS0905USB uses the same firmware as the BiStep series of products; however, the base board was designed with half-stepping unipolar control in mind. For operation to 1/16th of a full step, the SimStep and BiStep product capabilities are equivalent; however, for resolutions finer than 1/16th of a full step, the BiStep series of offerings provide better positional precision.

Click Here for the full PDF manual for the SS0905 product.

Click here if you need to download the current version Adobe Acrobat Reader from Adobe's site.

We accept American Express, MasterCard, Visa and Discover for orders from the USA. For international orders, we require wire transfers.

All products come with a 30 day satisfaction guarantee, and the assembled products come with a 30 day return to factory warranty. Please click here for the details...

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Key Benefits

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