It’s a shame that the three L6234 half-bridge enable pins are wired together on this board, as this precludes using the board as a traditional ESC for experimentation or comparison between FOC and traditional brushless control (6-step electronic commutation) methods.
So (FWIW) I guess this is a request to not do this on future versions of the shield board, or at least make it jumperable.
Hi @sgordon777 , welcome to SimpleFOC!
I think this was a deliberate design decision on the part of Antun, because the Arduino UNO (for which the shield is designed) has only limited pins.
So in particular, if you used 2 extra pins for the the enable lines, I think it would no longer be possible to “stack” 2 SimpleFOC shields on top of each other.
For most BLDC driving use cases with FOC control it is not really needed to control the half-bridges into the high-Z state (both FETs closed). So I think it is preferable to be able to stack two shields.
But of course like you say, you can’t then also use the same shield for trapezoidal control.
If you need this, there are plenty of choices available: the DRV chips from TI, for example, usually support both 3-PWM and 6-PWM modes, and you can find both original TI evaluation boards, as well as cheaper models on AliExpress.
On these you have all the pins to have the full choice between 3-PWM with 1x EN, 3-PWM + 3 EN, or 6-PWM. But of course these boards are not Arduino shields, and you will have to connect them with wires.
Thanks for the response Runger,
there are plenty of choices available:
Yes, I’ve got a triple half-bridge driver board of my own design using discrete drivers+MOSFETs which I use, but it lacks some niceties like the shunts and I like the shield for it’s compactness and ease of setup.
I understand your constraint but maybe for the next board the enable lines could at least be jumpered so independent control is possible with some extra work?
Thanks
It’s a suggestion we will take on-board 
Feedback is certainly appreciated, so thank you for the suggestion!
Thanks!, much appreciated, same suggestion for the FOCMini board as well, this is a really cool little board and it’s versatility could be expanded with this as an option!