Search by company

Power chip has designs on inkjet printers

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Dec 23, 2005

A novel power combo IC aims to simplify the system design of inkjet printers and multifunction office devices.

Advanced Silicon has released its first power combo IC intended to simplify the system design of inkjet printers and multifunction office devices.

The ASMTC6301A is a highly integrated IC comprising control functions for several motors, power management blocks, sensing and protection features as well as a communication interface.

Besides integrating a wide range of functions, the ASMTC6301A also offers a high degree of flexibility and can be used in many different configurations.

Depending on the system, the IC can drive either four DC motors or two DC and one bipolar stepper motors, enabling the control of all the motors of a printing device (eg paper feed, print head position, and scanner).

Furthermore, an analogue encoder interface combined with a dual 8bit multichannel ADC offer position control of the motors when operated in conjunction with a code wheel.

The ASMTC6301A works from a single voltage (20-35V) and delivers three switching buck regulated supplies for the logic, core and analogue circuitry.

Their values are selectable (1.5, 1.8, 2.5 or 3.3V for the digital supplies) or even programmable (5-8.5V for the analogue supply) with output currents ranging between 0.6 and 2.0A.

The chip can be controlled through a 32MHz SPI interface.

Several configuration and status registers allow storing circuit parameters for the motor drivers, encoder interface and the voltage regulators.

The data conveyed back to the main controller include information about the motor position as well as important signals indicating system-level problems (eg thermal warnings, undervoltage conditions etc).

The ASMTC6301A includes many protection features to guarantee correct and damage-free operation in all circumstances.

The motor drivers are protected against overtemperature and overcurrent, and the regulators are protected against cycle-by-cycle overcurrent and output short circuits.

Particular care has been taken with the implementation of the power-up and shutdown sequences and to the handling of errors - both critical and noncritical.

The ASMTC6301A brings numerous advantages to printer designers, including a more compact system, shorter development time, reduced component count and overall increased reliability.

The circuit comes in a thermally enhanced QFP-64 package.

It is available for sampling now.