Can A4988 Motor Driver Be Used For Brushed DC Motors?

[hal9001]

A4988 is made for driving stepper motors. But can it be used for driving a single brushed DC motor in Full Step Operation if the DC motor is connected between OUT1A and OUT1B? Each OUT group is a full bridge.
Can it be driven continuously in one direction until the direction pin is toggled or is there a hardware limitation?




Cheers

[Kjelt]

The answer is in the first picture on the left bottom.
The first two steps the motor will turn CW the following two steps it will turn CCW.
The result is a "hunting" motor response around its start position.

So unless you can reprogram the logic, you need a brushed dc motor driver.

[hal9001]

The answer is in the first picture on the left bottom.
The first two steps the motor will turn CW the following two steps it will turn CCW.
The result is a "hunting" motor response around its start position.

So unless you can reprogram the logic, you need a brushed dc motor driver.

Thanks.
The motion for the motor in my application isnt complex. It is going to go in one direction until a sensor is triggered then stopped and returned until the other sensor is triggered.
 I was thinking I can use the RESET pin to make sure the Phase is always initialized the same when the motor is stopped. Then if I give one STEP  the driver will always respond the same way and if I give 2 steps then it will change direction.  And the ENABLE pin can be used to turn the motor off between direction changes. Will that work? I might be not understanding the "hunting"described.

[Kjelt]

With hunting I mean the continuous CW and CCW short movements of the axis so it does not stand still, it keeps moving.
It is often used in servo applications where there is an encoder feedback path that is used as the current position which is compared to the desired position. If those two can not exactly be matched due to the resolution of the servomotor it keeps doing that same thing.

What is driving the stepperdriver, if it is a microcontroller then what I understand of your description you do not really need a motor driver ic. You can do the logic in your microcontroller and drive an H bridge.
I would forget about the A4988 unless someone else has a clever idea of using it.

If you need repeatability (step) and current protection have a look at the TI DRV8xxx series.

[hal9001]

With hunting I mean the continuous CW and CCW short movements of the axis so it does not stand still, it keeps moving.
It is often used in servo applications where there is an encoder feedback path that is used as the current position which is compared to the desired position. If those two can not exactly be matched due to the resolution of the servomotor it keeps doing that same thing.

What is driving the stepperdriver, if it is a microcontroller then what I understand of your description you do not really need a motor driver ic. You can do the logic in your microcontroller and drive an H bridge.
I would forget about the A4988 unless someone else has a clever idea of using it.

If you need repeatability (step) and current protection have a look at the TI DRV8xxx series.

Yes a microcontroller is driving it. This is a prototype for the customer who hasnt chosen if they are using a stepper motor or bushed DC motor yet. If Im going to include the A4988 for the stepper motor then I was wondering if it will work for testing a DC motor as well by using OUT1. If the A4988 cant work in this way, a separate DC driver will have to go in.