The new PMAC2-PC/104 from Micromech Systems has been designed to deliver motion control for mid- to high-volume multi-axis motion control systems that demand a cost-effective and compact, yet flexible and reliable solution.
They are a small-format version of the well-known feature-rich PMAC family of controllers from Delta Tau, the first motion controllers to exploit the power of digital signal processor (DSP) technology.
This product expands the possibilities by providing a migration pathway to more sophisticated and powerful systems. The PMAC2-PC/104 can be applied directly to both analogue servos or pulse-and-direction stepper drives, and with an optional piggyback board it can also support the high-performance 'direct-PWM' pure digital control.
For applications using a series of boards in the PC/104 form factor, the controller can be installed in a PC/104 stack or act as a stand-alone controller with serial communications, inlcuding RS-232, USB, or Ethernet.
The board delivers a very high level of integration to achieve its small form factor, the main board having only three main components, the Motorola DSP CPU with embedded RAM, the servo ASIC and flash memory backup. The simplicity of its construction makes it very simple and reliable while still maintaining its core capabilities.
It supports four channels of servo/stepper interface, an RS-232 serial communications port, and an optional PC/104 bus communications port. Digital inputs and outputs that are not employed for their dedicated purpose can be used as general-purpose I/O yielding up to 12 outputs and 24 inputs for each set of 4 channels. There is also available an expansion board enabling an increase to eight servo inter-face channels with optional added digital I/O capability, including a link to hundreds of external I/O points.
The USB/Ethernet/Digital-IO board enables the use of one of two high-speed wire communications interfaces either USB or Ethernet that can be used with or without dual-ported RAM. There is a further option that provides substantial digital I/O capability with an 8-input/8-out-put port that directly connects to an Opto-22 PB16 or equivalent I/O driver board.
In addition a 'multiplexer' port that can interface to hundreds of I/O points on PMAC's ACC-34 family boards (or be used directly as 8 inputs and 8 outputs) and a 'handwheel' port with two supplemental machine channels.
Each of these can be used as a quadrature encoder input or a pulse-and-direction/single-phase PWM output for motion or process use. The addition of this board permits the PMAC2-PC/104 to be used as a full-fledged machine tool controller with the 'PMAC-NC' software.