What is your product?

This is the Pololu A4988 premium edition in black. This driver board profile is used in newer CNC setups and has a long lineage in 3-D printing setups.

If you want to drive stepper motors, these driver carrier boards simplify the process tremendously. All you need is logic power with ground and motor power with ground. After that, it's just a matter of two logic pins, one for direction and one for step. The board handles everything else, up to 1/16 microsteps.

What makes your product great?

When the STEP pin goes high, the module reads the DIR pin. Depending on if DIR is high or low, the driver makes the motor turn one single step in either direction.

Advanced configuration can be implemented by jumping other pins on the board. The board can be put to sleep to keep temperature in check and can also be configured to move fractions of a step, down to a single 16th. For the average 200 position stepper motor, that means the motor axle can move in single 0.1125 degree increments.

The black edition is a four layer board. Two layers are thermal sinks and work to keep the board about 20% cooler than its green, non-premium counterpart. Cooler chips mean more power delivery to the motor. This module can control a single stepper motor up to 2 amps per coil (bi-polar motors have two coils). If you plan on abusing your steppers, this is the driver you want to implement.

To further help with cooling, we include a heat sink with every module. The sink comes with a thermal adhesive pad to make attaching it simple.

This is our favorite upgrade module for use with our CNC Stepper Shield, but it can be used as a standalone for any project needing precise control.

Read more about CNC implementation or check out Pololu's documents and description.

Tell us about yourself.

We're a concern making property for cons, stage and screen. The love of excellent props has spurred us on to building excellent, small scale tools and sharing those tools like we do with the work we create with them.
We are the convergence of mech and tech. We are reactive.