This is a question for all who have experience with TMC2100 stepper drivers. I want to hear your thoughts and experiences with them. I’ve been using them for 2 months now and noticed that they are very sensitive to overheating. They have to be cooled 100% of the time with a fan or they won’t even last a minute in idle without triggering what i believe is the overheating protection (basically turning off). And what’s the deal with those bridge connections i see with many users (CFG1 to GND)? I have 5 of my 6 drivers without any modifications (removed all jumers) and 1 driver i tried bridging like i saw in some guides and also in thomas’s video only to compare the two configurations. I see no diference at all between the two (using megatronics 3.1 if that matters). Can anyone explain whats the deal here?
I have a small fan blowing over the Rumba with 6 TMC2100 and never had a heat problem. I run them at 24v. It was recommended to me to do the modification and all axis drivers have it, but the two extruders haven’t and it makes no difference.
The bridge is or is not needed depending on what type of board you are using. If CFG1 is pulled to GND via your board and you removed all the µstepping jumpers you are fine. If your board doesn’t, than you have to make the bridge. Also, CFG1 to GND and CFG2/CFG3 not connected to either HIGH or GND does set the TMC2100 into “stealthchop”-mode. The only reasonable mode for use in a 3d printer.
The drivers are getting hot because of their own logic-power converter that converts any additional voltage into heat.
Cooling the drivers with just a simple fan shouldn’t be a problem at all.
I see. So would decreasing the voltage from 24V to say 20V help with the overheating issue? Normally i don’t have any issues but it did happen that every few weeks i would get a failed print because of drivers overheating.
@Primoz_Brglez what do you have the current set to at the moment for your drivers and on what size stepper?
Just use better heatsinks and better thermaltape. FischerTechnik Pin Fin heatsinks, 10x10x12mm are the best to get…
@Pieter_Koorts V-ref is about 1.1V for NEMA 17, 1.68A, 45ncm steppers
@Primoz_Brglez not 100% sure what current that is but I currently run my tmc2100 on 24 volts and 0.6-0.8 amps. I find setting the current higher tends to warm them up quite a bit but if I stay around this it is fine with a fan blowing at them. This is on 0.9 degree 44ncm steppers. I did try them on 12 volts and they worked okay but then moved to 24 volts so I don’t have any long term data on a 12 volt system.
you could read the wikipage I set up a while ago: http://reprap.org/wiki/TMC2100
1,1V vref equals 1,1A Imax. I generally set all my TMC2100 to 1,2V and never had any issues with overheating. But, like I stated above, I do use good heatsinks and highend thermalpads with proper cooling by a fan. On one of my printers, I even cooled them passive: http://well-engineered.net/images/projekte/DICE/015.jpg
Hey, maybe a little offtopic questions but: do you know why TMC2100 are not so popular in new 3d printers electronics? ; have you encountered high pitch noises from motors during printing? ; anybody heard about TMC2100 integrated in some new 32bit electronics for 3d printers (except replicape)?
at 24v there are no high pitch noises. i did also try them on my other printer which runs at 12v and the noises were quite annoying. the general noise from loud steppers never bothered me before, but after i switched to TMC2100 i never want to go back to DRV8825 or A4988