What Makes TMC2208 Stepper Motor Drivers Silent?

In this video, we're going to take a look at what TMC2208 stepper motors do differently to allow them to drive stepper motors near silently. We'll use a simple oscilloscope to plot actual current measurements so that we can visualise the difference.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
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Equipment Used:

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CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:32 Test Setup
2:02 A4988 Driver
5:34 TMC2208 Driver
7:32 Final Thoughts

If you've got any ideas for Raspberry Pi, Arduino, or other Electronics projects or tutorials you'd like to see, let me know in the comments section.

[ffrige]

Back in the days when I used to work for Xerox doing field service in downtown Oahu HI on Xerox’s 50xx and 53xx series low volume copy machines, it always amazed me how quiet the platen scanners were in the 5328 vs the older generation 5028 (for example).

One day at the Xerox warehouse in downtown Honolulu, I found myself sitting in my car on my lunch break staring at the driver boards for the platen scanners, wondering what in the world made this machine so quiet. The 5328 series driver boards look damn near identical to the 5028 driver boards. You can even stick a 5328 driver board into the 5028 copier if you wanted a quieter running, older copy machine. Mind you, the entire being of the 5328 was quiet. The platen scanners, the ADF feed drive and ADF belt drive (the big ass white belt that drags your original documents onto the platen glass from the document feeder on top of the glass for your documents) ran quiet. At that time, I was amazed at every single improvement done on the 5328 from its 5028 predecessor. Every single stepper in the 5328 had this characteristic, with parts interchangeable with the 5028. Every single headache that the 5028’s gave customers were addressed in the 5328. Using almost identical electronics. WTF, right?

The Xerox gig I had was my very first technical job out of school, so this was over 28 years ago. Watching this video, I finally know how the Xerox engineers made the next generation 53xx series covers run quiet.

Thank you for that!

[peacekper]

Man, you really are doing everybody a service with this video. Thank you so much for going through all this effort to educate us. This video was awesome!

[_KingRaz]

What an incredibly useful, straightforward, and informational video. Great work dude, thanks!

[daliasprints]

The microstepping is only one ingredient in being quieter. Stealthchop (on by default and in your test I think?) is another. But even with Stealthchop off and interpolation to 256 microsteps off (real nominal microstepping) it's significantly quieter than A4988 at same (eg 16) number of microsteps. It'd be interesting to measure why.

[kreature]

I'd like this test to be done while at proper speeds, not at a constant slow speed.
Also, while changing speed as the added interpolation will have to guess how the speed will change in the future to create a non discontinuous signal that causes noise.
Acceleration curves should be visible if stepped pulserate is used, stepping back and forth between the rates and triggering scope on the change.

[Viking]

That was an awesome explanation. Thanks for the demo. I had no idea how that worked at all. I was just glad my 3D Printer came with silent drivers!

[feryxd]

I have always found your shoulder to lean on whenever I needed it. Happy Birthday to the loveliest brother!

[chrisalexthomas]

Apart from learning a bit about stepper motor drivers, I also discovered what POKITMETER TR is. It looks interesting for people who don't have a big desk to run all these machines from. I don't have space for a full size oscilloscope. This looks like an interesting alternative, thanks!

[rewolff]

The main "break" in the A4988 sinewave is the part-square-wave that you see poking through. That's because of a configuration error on the original pololu driver that everybody since then has copied. It's a whole lot better when you modify the stepper driver to change the chips configuration.

[MarcusBuer]

Decrease in incremental torque doesn't mean what most people think it means. The torque overall is the same on the fullstep and half step positions, independently if you are using full step or microstepping, it only decreases the torque in the interval between the steps, because it is trying to hold in a position that is between the coils. So there is no lost torque, only incremented accuracy, with a precision still within the full step precision.

[pcfred]

You only get an increase in torque by increasing voltage at high step rates. That is due to inductive reluctance. The higher the step rate the smaller the window to dump current into the motor windings. At some high speed that short duration becomes an issue. Inductors resist changes in current. Voltage overcomes that inductive reluctance. Reluctance is like active resistance.

[glennfeldt_]

So that is why my 3D printer is so much quieter with the new main board! Great explanation👍🏻🇸🇪

[toddkerns]

Wow, that was a great video! I had no idea that the number of microsteps were so important. Thanks.

[richienorthcott]

Thanks for this - I have been building mechanical some clocks driven by Arduino and a small stepper motor. I had been using the A4988, but was frustrated by the noise/vibration at the low speed I'm using (1.5RPM). These are a total game changer, it runs silently now.

[zitwaar]

I had no idea how much i needed this video!

[electronics.unmessed]

Michael, kudos for that video. I need to consider this in my projects to reduce stepper motors noise.

[kurtnelle]

Nice visual explanation of why they are so much quieter. Could you perhaps have done a comparison with the TMC's in full-step mode? I think the drivers do a little more to make the motor silent than the microsteps.

[bobgeisel]

Excellent Video with a great explanation of silent drivers. Time to update some of my stepper motor projects. Also, I really like the Pokit tool.

[karajan]

thanks for a terrific and really easy to understand view on micro stepping. Until now I didn’t really understand why micro stepping exists.!!

[Destructor]

Great video, and an unexpected bonus is that your observation about interrupting the circuit with the meter may offer a solution to a problem with my own printer! Fascinating. Well presented information, thank you. Liked and Subbed.