MotionNet™ Distributed Motion Control from Advantech Simplifies Large-Scale Motion Control

Advantech today announced the launch of the MotionNet™ distributed motion control solution. With a master-slave system design, MotionNet represents an innovative and cost-effective solution for advanced motion control applications with many axes.

Motion control is growing in complexity as the number of axes in newly developed machines with motion control increases each year. Distance is also becoming an issue, as motors are located further and further away from the host computer. MotionNet was engineered to tackle the problems of increasing spending on wiring and maintenance of these complex motion control systems, and it also gets rid of distance limitations.

MotionNet products are categorized as Master cards or Slave modules. While the Master card is kept in the host PC, the slave modules can be distributed so that they are next to motor drivers on the factory floor. The communication speed between the MotionNet slave modules can be up to 20 Mbps. This makes it possible to scan 2048 I/O points within 1.04 ms (or 1024 I/O points in 0.56 ms). Furthermore, the MotionNet master will update the I/O status automatically, and map data into local memory. Software running on the host PC can then read the status by simply reading the onboard memory, so no polling of slave modules is necessary.

Each port of a master card can control up to 2048 I/O connections or 64 motion axes, so future extensions are easily implemented. The distance between a master card and its slave modules can be up to 100 meters, and this distance is covered with a low-cost Cat 5 network cable. In addition to saving wiring costs, debugging and maintenance is also simplified.

Another advantage of MotionNet is its compatibility with motor drivers from different vendors. Advantech provides specially designed wiring boards for popular motion drivers from vendors such as PanasonicR MitsubishiR and YaskawaR This makes configuration easier, as pin-to-pin cables can be used. Having a selection of motor vendors can also be an advantage when sourcing of a certain motor is difficult.

Motion control and I/O functions with MotionNet use the same library. This unique feature saves time, as programmers do not need to study both a motion library and an I/O library. You can also connect to a manual pulse generator directly to adjust and calibrate the system without having to write programs first.

MotionNet makes machine building with motion control easier. The savings made on wiring and programming effort, as well as the compatibility with a wide range of popular motors have already led to many customer requests for MotionNet products. Advantech is not content with the current selection though. There are already plans to release MotionNet products based on PCI, PC/104, and 1-axis motion slave modules as well as DIO slave modules.