Simple BLDC motor controller circuit based on any IC suggestions please

[bsodmike]

Hi all,

I want to take on a few BLDC projects and want a simple triple-H bridge + IC solution to take care of all the comped aspects. Ideally, if the motor shaft is made to stall (load is too much) the IC should implement current control and reduce the current through the armature windings. This is one example of the many aspects the IC should take care of.

I should be able to interface any MCU solution, say ESP32 and drive a simple PWM signal into the IC.

Does anyone already have a verified solution for the above?

Also if any hobbyists are willing to take this on as a quick side project, I’m interested to make this a paid gig.

Thanks!
Cheers M

[james_s]

What voltage? A good place to start is probably ESCs designed for model aircraft, quite a few of them have been reverse engineered for aftermarket firmware, BLHeli and SimonK are the two common firmware projects I'm familiar with. For years most of them used 8 bit Atmega chips.

[Benta]

The problem is that RC model ESCs are usually for sensorless control, which won't work for stalled motors.
Toshiba has a quite nice lineup:
https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap-en/semiconductor/product/motor-driver-ics/brushless-dc-motor-driver-ics.html

[Psi]

You could order some RC car sensor'ed ESCs and see what they use and how they are made.

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/hobbykingr-tm-x-car-60a-brushless-car-esc-sensored-sensorless.html

[Benta]

You could order some RC car sensor'ed ESCs and see what they use and how they are made.

That's a nice idea. I didn't think about car controllers.

[Doctorandus_P]

You have not wrote anything about the motor size or power output you want, so your question is a bit too open, it can be from miniature motors to multi kW.

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In general, these are also not "wire up and use" solutions. There is a very wide range of both motors and motor drivers and control loops have to be tuned to get the driver working reliably with a motor, and this is also load dependent.

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A bit of the problem with ESC based projects is that they tend to lean towards battery pack power with a low voltage and very high current, while more "industrial" oriented projects go towards higher voltages and more easily managed currents.

"SimpleFOC" may be a good starting point.

STspin may be the closest towards a "one chip" solution. It's an STM32 uC with lots of extra stuff integrated into a single IC:
* SMPS (for the uC) with input voltage of 50V or so.
* MOSfet drivers.
* Opamps for feedback current measurement.

L6234 may be an interesting motor driver IC (3-phase 50V 4A output)

There are also some projects that use FOC for 2-phase stepper motors such as Ananas Stepper and Mechaduino, and motors with something similar are already available such as the Makerbase MKS Servo57C and BigTreeTech also has an Servo57C. and there are also versions for smaller 42mm (Nema17) sized motors.  I'm not quite certain about the status of such products. You could view them as a ripoff of open source projects without any attribution to the original developers.

Other integrated closed loop stepper solutions are the Leadshine iST-2320 and the JSS57P2N

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Higher powered solutions tend to have a separate motor and motor driver. Servo motors for CNC spindles in the several kW range are quite common.

[bsodmike]

Hi Dr Andus, thanks for your detailed response. Yes, I want to avoid the ESC route too as I feel there’s less of a learning curve here.  For the time being I want to use what I have on hand unless there’s good reason to order something more suitable.

I’ve got a spare 1000Kv BLDC used on quadcopters. At 14.8v (4S), that’s ~14,800rpm.
Typically looking to go with a sensorless IC. I’ll go through your suggestions and update here as I make progress.

Thanks M

[bsodmike]

Hi all,

I found this solution from CubeMars which comes with a decent controller https://store.cubemars.com/goods-982-AK80-9.html

There are also some decent videos on this

I might grab a pair to have a play, thanks!