There is no universal standard used throughout the motion control industry which enables the simple connection or substitution of components necessary for automated control of motion systems. We are attempting to keep compatibility and component interchange issues as simple as possible by establishing a standard way to implement motion control hardware at the APS. Each piece of hardware from motors and stages, through driver cabling, to controllers, and even software driver specs are considered in a complete motion control standard. Our goal is to make the implementation of equipment straight-forward to first-time users, to allow for compatible systems from beamline to beamline, and to enable swapping out one component for another with the same function without complicated and time consuming reconfiguration.
So far we have standardized on some definitions and driver/motor cabling conventions. Tables are provided with detailed pinouts for many of the most popular motors, stages, and drivers encountered in beamline and/or experimental setups. CATs are encouraged to give feedback and to provide information on their particular setups if not included in the published standard.
Future work will expand the standard to address controller/driver connections and software issues.