SG3525A.

Circuit description This IC is designed for use in switched mode power supplies, but can be configured to work nicely for our requirements. To explain the function of this circuit it is helpful to look at the innards of the chip, shown below:

The speed demand signal is input at pin 2, the op amp non-inverting input. The internal op amp is wired as a simple unity gain follower, and the demand signal is then applied to the PWM comparator. This compares the demand level with the oscillator output, in the same fashion as that shown in section 2.1.1. The frequency of the oscillator, and therefore the PWM signal produced, is governed by the value of the resistor to ground on the RT pin. The sync and osc out pins are not required for our purposes.

The output stage is a little odd, since it is designed for driving bipolar transformers in SMPS circuits. However, we can wire it so it produces a simple single PWM waveform. By not using the bottom transistor of the totem-pole output stages on both OutA and OutB outputs, tying OutA and OutB to ground, attaching a pull-up resistor to the Vc pin, then the bottom transistors of the output stages simply switch the Vc pin to ground, and the signal at the Vc pin is our required PWM signal. The IC also has two protection mechanisms for use in SMPS circuits which we can also make use of. The soft start feature prevents the output from saturating at 100% ratio when the chip is powering up. This is useful for us as it stops the motors from being driven as our circuits are powering up. The Shutdown input is an active-high input that immediately shuts down the outputs, and resets the soft-start feature. This can be used by current-limiting circuitry to turn off the power MOSFETs in the speed controller, and the soft-start will back-off the PWM while the problem can be addressed by the driver.