SparkFun Brushless Motor Driver - 3-Phase (TMC6300)

The SparkFun 3-Phase Brushless Motor Driver, featuring the TMC6300 from ADI + Trinamic, is a powerful and easy-to-use three-phase motor driver that was designed to control our Brushless Gimbal Motor. It can be used to control any 3-phase BLDC or PMSM motor with up to 2A (1.4ARMS) of total drive current. Separate high-side and low-side control of the three half-bridges allows for incredible control of each phase of the motor commutation. The driver also provides temperature and short circuit protections, and a diagnostic output to indicate system faults. With a 1.8V regulated power output and an operating voltage down to 2V, the TMC6300 is suitable for low-power microcontroller and battery-powered designs (min. two AA/NiMh cells, or one to two Li-Ion cells).

Our board layout has been designed with the LEDs and labels facing up, IC down. This allows the thermal pad on the board to be accessed if cooling is required. Additionally, the breakout pins are specially aligned to fit perfectly onto a breadboard and hold the headers more perpendicular to facilitate assembly.

Controlling 3-phase motors is not trivial and this board requires six PWM signals to fully control one motor. We've found the Arduino Simple Field Oriented Control library to work well with the board; however, there are some hardware limitations such as supported microcontrollers for 6PWM Mode. With additional considerations, for integrating position sensors into the feedback control loop.