The scarcity of Pololu A4983 drivers

As some of you may know, it seems that the Pololu A4983 drivers (without the regulator) have experienced a bit of a world wide shortage, most likely due to their use in the new Arduino Mega/Pololu electronics for the RepRap.

From everything I've seen, Pololu won't have new stocks till December.

That said, there are a few places out there that seem to have stock. Just note that they might not be cheap.

In an effort to be helpful, here's some places out there that have stock. If you buy some, and the place still has stock, it'd be nice to see a post here letting people know they still have some. If you go to buy and they're out of stock, it'd also be nice to see a post here too so people don't waste their time.

Always check:

Pololu Distributors page - Good list of most of the Pololu distributors world wide.

Places that still seem to have stock:

Watterott Electronic - Germany. Say they have 181 in stock (as of this post). Not cheap and shipping outside of the EU is EXPENSIVE!

SK Pang Electronics - England. Stock figures only say 5+, so no idea how many they have.

PS: I just went through trying to buy a single Pololu A4983 driver board, as apparently one of mine is dead (doh!). No fun at all. Kudos to the people on the #reprap irc channel for helping me find a place locally that had ONE left in stock.

well i guess this goes to show just how much this community has grown, i have just 4 right now and no spairs so i hope i do not need to get another one for now, i wonder if they will get any cheaper if any one can get a volume discount.

Couple of updates:

1. Seems Ultimachine will have some more A4983's shortly, due to a kit maker returning them as they weren't using them.
2. Johnnyr of Ultimachine is working on a design for a A3979 carrier that is a drop in replacement for the A4983 Pololu carrier. The pic attached is one he posted on IRC yesterday. This is by no means a fully tested board yet, but it's promising!

i feel like an idiot for asking but whats the difference between the A4983 and the A3979, i cant get too much off google. i know i am using the A4983

The differences are basically:

1. A3979 will drive 2.5A, vs A4983 will drive 2A.
2. A3979 requires more passive components to provide a working setup (ie: on the carrier board) than the A4983.
3. A3979 has a lower RDS(on) value than the A4983 (slightly more efficient).
4. A3979 supports 1, 1/2, 1/4, and 1/16 stepping, whereas the A4983 supports 1,1/2, 1/4, 1/8 and 1/16 stepping. Basically the A3979 doesn't support 1/8 stepping.
5. A3979 is a physically bigger chip, so should be easier to heatsink.
6. A3979 is fairly common and stocks are widely available.

Specs (for the actual chips on the carrier):
Allegro A3979 specs
Allegro A4983 specs

Hello.

I'm Ryan from Pololu. We recently got our hands on some A4983's so we will be able to make more of the A4983 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier within the week. We have started allowing backorders on our site. If you backorder them, they should be able to ship soon. It's still going to be a while before we have the carrier board with regulators back in stock.

Regards,
Ryan Mulligan

Ryan, thanks for the update. It is really great when we get the suppliers and commercial people to post on these boards to help us and keep us up-to-date.

Of course, I placed my back order before responding! I am nearly finished with the X-Y-Z table of a McWire, and I want a test controller to run a stepper axes or extruder forwards and backwards, and a temperature controller to test out the extruder heater and heated bed. So in addition to the Gen2OnaBoard controller, I want to build a little Attiny board with a couple of pots to control motor speed and direction and heater temp, a Pololu stepper driver, a power MOSFET, and a small digital display. That will be useful for testing individual parts, or sub-systems of a reprap before putting the whole thing on line at once. If Sebastian sees this, I will even try to put all the schematic and pcb layout and code documentation on a wiki page for a stand alone stepper tester.

Mike

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2010 08:26PM by rocket_scientist.

i am glad to see the supplies are noticing us too, i will be sure to buy from them again here soon too.