SS4DxxUSB board

SS4D05USB board, showing connector option LLL

The SS4D series of USB motor controller boards board are the four motor versions of our SS0705 USB board. They are complete Unipolar four stepper motor controller system. The boards are 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 these units can handle quite well), and can be trivially controlled by other microprocessing systems (such as the Parallax Basic Stamp product line). Since they take 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 1 amp/winding of drive current.

The SS4D products include the capability of driving one to four 0.5 or 1 amp (depending on the controller model) 4 pole 6.5 to 15 volt Unipolar stepper motors at a time when used with a single power supply. As with the BiStep products, they also support 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.

Similarly, this board may be optionally configured to operate in an NC (numerically controlled) process environment, through use of the NCStepper4D firmware option. This firmware tightly links the four motors together, providing for easy "exact straight line" and simplified arc/circle drawing. Please click here for more information about the NCStepper4D firmware.

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Key Benefits

The SS4D USB boards have the following key capabilities when using the PotStepper4D firmware:

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

Each motor may draw up to 0.5 amps per winding for the SS4D05, and up to 1 amp per winding for the SS4D10.
If fewer than 4 motors are being controlled, the remaining motor drivers become available as drivers for relays and similar devices.
Limit switches may be used to automatically request motion stop of any motor in either direction.
Rates of 1 to 50,000 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 50,000 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)
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 50,000 microsteps per second may be requested.
Runs off of a single user-provided 6.5 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 6.5 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.

Click Here for the full PDF manual for the SS4D products with the PotStepper4D firmware.

Click Here for the full PDF manual for the SS4D products with the NCStepper4D firmware.

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

Click here if you prefer to use Foxit Reader as is available from the Foxit Software site.

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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...