PRESS RELEASES

Lincoln, MA – Performance Motion Devices, Inc (PMD) announces the Magellan™-PCI featuring a new, faster servo loop rate of 50 µsec per axis. Available in 1, 2, 3 and 4-axis versions, Magellan-PCI is a high performance motion-control-card that supports DC brush, brushless DC, microstepping and pulse & direction motors. It is ideally suited for applications in medical, scientific, and high performance automation.

The upgraded servo loop rate provided by Magellan-PCI improves performance for applications such as high speed point-to-point moves, and advanced contouring. In addition to a servo loop rate of 50 µsec per axis, Magellan-PCI provides 5 Mcount/sec quadrature encoder input rate, and pulse and direction output of up to 5 Mpulses/Sec. Other motion control features include trajectory generation, servo loop closure, quadrature signal input, motor output signal generation, servo trace, on-the-fly changes, and commutation. Communication occurs through a PCI bus, via a serial port or using CANBus.

Chuck Lewin, President and CEO of PMD, comments "The issue in multi-axis-motion-control right now is performance and cost. Just a few years ago a sub-100 µsec loop time was the realm of exotic, high end products. Today it's common. Users expect more performance from a PCI card at a lower cost, and thanks to high speed DSPs they're getting it."

Utilizing PMD’s Magellan™ Motion-Control-IC, the Magellan motion controller allows designers to create cost-effective, high performance motion systems using standard C or C++ programming. The card accepts input parameters such as position, velocity, acceleration, deceleration and jerk, and automatically generates the programmed trajectory. On-the-fly changes and PLC-style external signal input/output breakpoints can be used to create application-specific profile changes.

Magellan-PCI is available now for US and North American distribution.