Two variants, one design philosophy: build exactly what the application needs — and make it easy to install.
Not every project that comes through Zikodrive is about breaking new technical ground. Some of the most successful designs are the ones that solve a specific, practical problem for a customer as simply and reliably as possible. This stepper motor driver, developed for a leading European peristaltic pump manufacturer, is one of those projects — and it's now shipped in the thousands.
The brief
Peristaltic pumps are used across a wide range of industries — from laboratory dosing and medical devices to industrial fluid handling — wherever precise, contamination-free fluid transfer is needed. Stepper motors are a natural fit for driving these pumps, offering the fine, repeatable control that accurate dosing and flow rates demand.
Our customer needed a stepper driver that could be built into their pump range in two configurations, to suit different products within their line-up. The technical performance requirements were well understood and relatively modest — this wasn't a project that called for cutting-edge motor control algorithms or exotic silicon. What mattered far more to the customer was how the driver would integrate into their production process: how quickly it could be wired in, how reliably it could be configured, and how consistently it could be built at volume across two variants.
That shift in emphasis — from "how sophisticated can we make this" to "how well does this serve the application" — shaped every decision in the design.
Designing for the installer, not just the motor
A stepper driver's job doesn't stop at generating step pulses and managing current to the motor coils. In a high-volume OEM product, how the board is physically connected into the wider assembly can matter just as much as how it performs electrically. For this project, two connection strategies were specified, each suited to a different stage of the customer's build process:
Sprung clip connectors were used for the primary wiring interface. These allow cables to be pushed straight into the connector and held securely by spring tension, with no screw terminals to tighten and no crimped connectors to align. On a production line, that translates directly into faster, more consistent assembly — operators don't need to apply consistent torque or double-check a screw hasn't backed out in transit, and cables can be replaced or reworked quickly if needed.
Male pin headers were used elsewhere on the board for rapid installation into the final pump assembly. Where the sprung clips are about ease of individual wire connection, the pin headers are about speed of final assembly — allowing the board to be mated directly into a matching connector on the pump housing or backplane in a single motion, rather than requiring individual wiring at that stage.
Using two different connector strategies on the same board might look like added complexity from a pure electronics standpoint, but from a manufacturing standpoint it's the opposite: each connector type was chosen because it was the right fit for that specific stage of assembly, reducing overall build time and the potential for installation errors across both variants.
Configuration without complexity: jumper pads for current setting
One requirement that came directly from the customer was the ability to make simple current-level adjustments during production, without introducing extra process steps, firmware variants, or programming stations onto their line.
The solution was to expose current-level selection through jumper pads on the board. Rather than requiring a firmware change, a reprogramming step, or a more complex configuration interface, production operators can set the appropriate current level for a given build simply by placing (or omitting) jumpers at the relevant pads. This keeps configuration physical, visual, and fast — easy to verify at a glance, and easy to build into existing quality checks — while still giving the customer the flexibility to tune the driver's output current to suit different variants or motor windings within their range.
It's a good example of the kind of design thinking that runs through a lot of Zikodrive's custom design motor controller work: solving a configuration requirement with the simplest mechanism that reliably does the job, rather than defaulting to the most technically elaborate option available.
From design to volume production
Both variants of the driver moved from design into full production, and the board has now shipped in several thousand units to date, supporting the customer's peristaltic pump range in the field. That volume is itself a validation of the approach taken: a design that's straightforward to build is also a design that scales cleanly, without the yield issues, rework, or line slowdowns that can come with over-complicated assemblies.
Why this project matters
It would be easy to assume that the most interesting projects in motor control are the ones with the most advanced firmware, the tightest control loops, or the newest silicon. This project is a useful counterpoint to that assumption.
The real engineering challenge here wasn't algorithmic — it was about deeply understanding how the customer would build, wire, configure, and ship their product, and then designing a board around that reality. Connector choice, header placement, and a simple jumper-based configuration scheme aren't glamorous design decisions, but they're the decisions that determine whether a product is easy or painful to manufacture at volume.
For Zikodrive, this project stands as a clear example of what "designed around the application" really means in practice: not the most technically complex controller we've built, but one of the best fits between design and use case — and a driver that's proven itself reliable across thousands of units in a demanding, real-world application.