Roll your own

The fourth major type of motion controller in use today can be referred to as an integrated motion card. In this approach, shown in figure 4, the advantages of reduced wiring are combined with easy multi-axis synchronization by locating the amplifiers on the multi-axis card itself.

The advantage of this approach is very low cost, since there are no drives or amplifiers to purchase. The main disadvantage is that the motor drive power levels tend to be low, because high switching voltages and heat are incompatible with sensitive digital logic circuitry.

It is worth noting that unlike multi-axis motion cards, which are available from a number of off-the-shelf product vendors, integrated cards are generally designed specifically for a given application. This can be done either by programming a CPU or DSP, or by using off-the-shelf motion processors. Motion processors are IC-based devices that greatly simplify the task of designing a motion card by providing built-in functions such as trajectory generation, servo loop closure, commutation, as well as other functions.