SpreadCycle™

SpreadCycle™ is an advanced cycle-by-cycle chopper mode. It offers smooth operation and good resonance-dampening over a wide range of speeds and loads. The SpreadCycle™ chopper scheme automatically integrates and tunes fast-decay cycles to guarantee smooth zero-crossing performance.

The adaptive current control of SpreadCycle™ achieves a perfect sinusoidal waveform to control stepper motors at an exceptionally high velocity. Even at high rpm, where classic constant t_off chopper modes show excessive deformations caused by the back-EMF of the motor, SpreadCycle™ remains highly effective.

Each chopper cycle is comprised of on, slow-decay, fast-decay, and second slow-decay phases. The two slow-decay phases and the two blank times per chopper cycle put an upper limit to chopper frequency. The SpreadCycle™ current is measured during each chopper cycle, and automatically adjusts to the optimal length of the fast-decay phases. Drivers equipped with SpreadCycle™ provide superior microstepping quality.