[TriEmbed] Stepper Motors

[Grawburg]

My bipolar stepper from  printer works fine with the A4988 control board (and Pololu wasn't kidding when they said it can get hot). I realize that one of the advantages of a stepper is that it holds position waiting to actually do something.  But that means my motor does get hot in idle when I actually don't care if it moves.  I was thinking about using transistors as switches between the A4988 and the motor that I will control from my Raspberry Pi. (They're more fun that using a couple of simple toggle switches.)  

My question concerns issues with the A4988 and cycling the power from the it to the motor.  Would I be better of putting the transistors between the power supply (12 VDC) and A4988?


Brian Grawburg