Motion Performance Trace

Introduction

Machine designers have a difficult task. More often than not they are asked to squeeze the maximum possible performance out of a machine design for the lowest possible cost. To accomplish this task, the designer typically begins by selecting or designing components such as motors, bearings, mechanical linkages etc. Then the designer prototypes the system and measures its performance. During the machine tuning process the variables that the designer may want to optimize are throughput, vibration, noise, efficiency, and accuracy. Inevitably there will be problems, or areas where the performance could be improved. 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?