Papers and Articles

We wrap up our deep dive series on how to diagnose common motion control problems and get your machine back on track!

Many motion applications require high accuracy both during, and at the end of, the move, but even if you are using perfectly optimized PID values to control position, the compensation loop is never perfect. You can improve motor performance by adding motion control elements outside of the PID loop. In this article, we will look at torque control and the related subject of torque FeedFoward, which will make your equipment run smoother, and deliver better accuracy.

Get a detailed look at motion control amplifiers. Making the right design choice when selecting a motion control amplifier can have a big impact on your machine's cost and performance.

Several trends have been driving the use of sophisticated, complex motor control algorithms. The most important of these trends include the desire for lower energy consumption and the need for higher performance. Performance Motion Devices Founder Chuck Lewin addresses these trends and introduces the major techniques used to control multi-phase motors, both brushless DC and AC induction.

Learn about the significant cost savings that can result from integrating separate motion control functions together. Understand the recent developments in motion ICs that have made new architectures possible.

Examine trends and review the four major motion control architectures in use today. Two of these can be traced back to earlier motion control approaches, and two are more recent additions.

The cost savings and flexibility offered by motion networks can be substantial. The key is knowing which solution will work best in your application.

With positioning motion control applications, one position feedback device has been king of the hill for a long time - the incremental optical encoder with quadrature output. This article will look at other encoder types and the just-as-important subject of data formats that are used to carry and encode position information.

Everyone who has worked in motion control has a war story, be it the machine that mysteriously stopped working or the motor that wouldn't stop vibrating. Fortunately, common problems often have common solutions.

Get an overview of proportional, integral, derivative (PID) based servo loops. We’ll introduce two standard manual tuning methods that work well for a large variety of systems.

Before selecting the best motor, or motors, for your design project, take time to understand what kind of positioning controls and functionality you need. In this article, Motoring to Success, we will look at the issues concerning the selection of the right type of motor controller for positioning control applications. The focus will be on understanding how these motors are controlled, and how the choice of the control techniques affects the system cost.

The question facing the designer is: how do you go about making these improvements? How do you optimize the various motion controller variables such as profile parameters, servo gains, and commutation, to arrive at the best overall machine performance?

Many motion applications require precise synchronization of one or more axes. Understand some of the important approaches toward motion synchronization and have some fun with a motion synchronization video from the PMD lab.