Posted to News on 12th Sep 2008, 09:24
Single- and multi-axis motion control made easy
Recent advances in the Magellan family of motion control processors and the accompanying Pro-Motion and C-Motion software tools have created a powerful combination that gives designers a way to incorporate motion control functionality into their demanding machine designs very quickly. Magellan provides designers with one-, two-, three- and four-axis chip set versions that can control DC brushed, brushless DC, microstepping and pulse-and-direction motors. Magellan Motion Control Processors are complete motion controllers requiring only an external amplifier. They are driven by a host using either an 8- or 16-bit parallel bus, CANBus 2.0B or an asynchronous serial port. User-selectable profiling modes include S-curve, trapezoidal, velocity contouring and electronic gearing. Servo loop compensation utilises a full 32-bit position error, PID with velocity and acceleration feedforward, integration limit and dual bi-quad filters for sophisticated motion control of complex loads.
Pro-Motion is a Microsoft Windows-based prototyping tool for rapidly setting up, tuning and testing motion control systems that use the Magellan Motion Control Processor. Pro-Motion optimises motion system applications by facilitating the setting and viewing of all parameters and the exercising of all features of a motion design. It includes a step-by-step axis wizard that allows designers to tune control loops quickly and easily. C-Motion development software is the motion control programming library for Magellan that provides a convenient set of callable C/C++ programming routines which contain all the code required to communicate with and control Magellan within an application. C-Motion enables application-specific C/C++ coding to be combined easily with C-Motion source code libraries. All set-up and development software is included free with Magellan.
Chuck Lewin, CEO of Performance Motion Devices, comments: "The driving factors in OEM machine design today are design efficiency, time-to-market and cost control. For those designers looking to integrate motion control into their machine designs, the powerful combination of proven features and performance of the Magellan chipset and the easy-to-use Pro-Motion and C-Motion software tools create a winning solution for lowering cost, increasing design efficiency and reducing time-to-market."
Two versions of Magellan are available. The multi-motor MC58000 series controls DC brushed, brushless DC and microstepping motors, while the MC55000 series controls pulse-and-direction motors. Magellan Motion Processors come in a single-IC, single-axis version, or in a two-IC, multi-axis version. The ICs are packaged in a 144-pin TQFP and a 100-pin TQFP. These devices operate at 3.3V and prices start at $33.00 in OEM quantities.
For additional information, go to www.pmdcorp.com/advanced-motion-control/advanced-motion-control.cfm.
To view a datasheet, go to www.pmdcorp.com/downloads/Magellan_Data_Sheet.pdf (1.68MB PDF).
