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Fri, 13 Feb 2009
Doubling the capacity of the SRV-1 / SVS motor controller
The SRV-1 and SVS use a Fairchild FAN8200 H-bridge for PWM motor control. This is a 2-channel H-bridge rated at .65A / channel continuous with 1A / channel peak.
For much larger motors, there are a variety of suitable higher capacity motor controllers such as the Dimension Engineering Sabertooth, Devantech MD23, etc. For smaller motors, the FAN8200 has generally been adequate for the SRV-1 robot base and a variety of other motors. However, we sometimes we find that we need a bit more current capacity, especially with motors wound for higher speeds. In this situation, we have found an easy solution by piggybacking a second FAN8200 to double the current handling capacity.
Because there is minimal clearance between the FAN8200 and the Matchport WLAN radio on the top side of the combo radio/motor board, we found it best for clearance and heat dissipation to solder the second FAN8200 to the underside of the radio/motor board, as shown here:
The main thing to watch is that the alignment of the FAN8200 pins matches between top and bottom, and to use plenty of solder to get a good contact. After soldering the chip, the leads are clipped for clearance:
That's all that is needed. The resulting configuration should be good for for driving motors at 1.3A / channel continuous (2.6A total) or 2A / channel peak (4A total).
Posted Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:14 | HTML Link | see additional stories ...