Control five stepper motors independently with STM32h745 ?

[hareesh9415]

We are planning to use the STM32H745 MCU for stepper motor control. Our application requires controlling five stepper motors independently.

Could you please confirm whether the STM32H745 series is suitable for this use case? In the block diagram, it is mentioned that the MCU provides 2 × 16-bit motor-control PWM timers.

Additionally, in the document UM1964 User Manual, it is stated that it is possible to control up to 8 stepper motors using an STM32 series MCU.

Given this information, we would like to understand:

• Whether the STM32H745 can practically support 5 independent stepper motors, and
• Any limitations or considerations regarding timer availability, PWM channels, or control implementation.

[Andrew Neil]

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@hareesh9415 wrote:

in the document UM1964 User Manual, it is stated that it is possible to control up to 8 stepper motors using an STM32 series MCU.

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That's the User Manual for the X-NUCLEO-IHM02A1 two-axis stepper motor driver expansion board based on L6470.

The L6470 is a driver chip which handles all the motor control - so that the host MCU doesn't have to do any of it:

https://www.st.com/resource/en/datasheet/l6470.pdf#page=20

So, using the L6470, you don't consume any of the timers on the host MCU.

PS:

and the 8-motor limit seems to be just down to the number of chip-select options available on the X-NUCLEO-IHM02A1 boardd

[AScha.3]

...or just :

>Whether the STM32H745 can practically support 5 independent stepper motors,

using the IHM02A1 boards , yes .

> Any limitations or considerations regarding timer availability, PWM channels, or control implementation

using the IHM02A1 boards you dont need PWM etc. , not even a H7 cpu, can be much smaller type;

the boards->motors get just commands by SPI connection from the cpu.

->

The expansion board includes two L6470s, a fully-integrated micro stepping motor driver used to control stepper motors by means of high-end motion control commands received through SPI.