Now in its eighth year, Design World’s annual Awards in Leadership in Engineering Achievement Program highlights innovation and engineering achievements from around the globe. This year, the expert independent judging panel reviewed dozens of submissions to award gold, silver, and bronze winners across multiple categories. The following products were recognized in the 2025 LEAP Awards […]
Controls
A simple PID loop tuning technique: Part 2 of 2
Proportional, integral, derivative (PID) position servo-loop tuning can be daunting. However, one simple technique works well for most systems. Chuck Lewin • Founder and CEO | Performance Motion Devices Inc. The first installment of this two-part series detailed a simple technique called step-response tuning that helps identify good PID-gain settings in motor-positioning applications. This manual […]
A simple PID loop tuning technique: Part 1 of 2
Proportional, integral, derivative (PID) position servo-loop tuning can be daunting. However, one simple technique works well for most systems. Chuck Lewin • Founder and CEO | Performance Motion Devices Inc. There are two types of servomotors commonly used for positioning motion control applications — the dc brush motor (which uses mechanical brushes to commutate the […]
Motion control boosts fence-post drilling throughput
On the manufacturing floor of British Columbia-based BKB Cedar Manufacturing, the whine of the drill motor and churning of its bit into tough cedar posts made a reassuringly steady cadence — until, too often, it didn’t. Workers would manually position posts by moving a heavy carriage back and forth between drilling operations. They would then […]
Accurate high-cycle clutch-brake positioning control
Force Control Industries presents the CLPC Control Model LC, which provides precise positioning on indexing applications when coupled with a Posidyne clutch brake. Designed to control high cycle count applications where the scan times of PLCs are too slow for accurate positioning, the CLPC-LC includes the CLPC control unit, and a position encoder mounted on […]
New Dart 65E PWM controller for 12–48V battery equipment
Dart Controls introduces the 65E, a high-performance Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) controller for 12 through 48-volt battery powered equipment. Rated for 10 to 20 amps continuous current, it features adjustable maximum speed, minimum speed, current limit, I.R. compensation, and acceleration, plus a quiet operating frequency of 18kHz. The updated Dart 65E includes a reversing option […]
Acromag adds stepper motor controller to family of modules with multi-protocol communication
Acromag now offers a stepper motor controller in their BusWorks NT Series of Ethernet I/O modules. The new NT2710 module provides six pulse train/logic outputs, six encoder inputs, and four general-purpose digital I/O for motion control applications with stepper motor drivers. A wide variety of commands are supported to precisely control the stepper motor position, […]
Controller/drive features FOC and sensorless control
The new N6 from Nanotec is a compact and powerful controller/drive for stepper motors (NEMA 14 to 34) and BLDC motors up to NEMA 23. With field-oriented control (FOC), the N6 ensures smooth operation and high energy efficiency. Its sensorless closed-loop control provides precise management of torque and speed. The controller/drive supports Hall sensors, incremental […]
Using motion controls in autonomous robotics
A new autonomous mobile robot (AMR) employs a precision controller-drive to accurately mark construction sites with building details. By Chuck Lewin • CEO | Performance Motion Devices The construction industry is under pressure. Labor shortages, rising material costs, and demand for speed and precision are pushing builders to seek automated solutions that boost efficiency, safety, […]
Titanium Maestro multi-axis motion controller controls up to 256 axes
Modern packaging processes are highly automated, fast, and require precise coordination between various machine components. Multi-axis motion controllers ensure these components move together precisely, even at high speeds, to avoid jams, misalignments, or product damage. They can also handle coordinated motion in multiple dimensions. Elmo Motion Control recently introduced its Titanium Maestro multi-axis motion controller […]
