• Assembly equipment
• Polishing/clean equipment
• Elevator systems

Amount, speed, and direction of a step motor are determined by appropriate configurations of digital control devices. Major types or digital control devices are: Motor drivers, control links, and controllers. These devices are employed as shown with the diagrams.

The driver accepts clock pulses and direction signals and translates these signals into appropriate phase currents in the motor. The indexer creates the colock pulses and direction signals. The computer or PLC (programmable logic controller) sends commands to the indexer.

Many motion applications have more than one motor to control. In such cases a multi-axis control system is available. A PC bus step motor controller card example, may have upt to 4 indexers mounted on it. Each one connected to a separate driver and motor . In a serial communication mode, up to 32 axes can be controlled from a single communication port and/or I/O channel.

Some applications require a high degree of synchronization, such as circular or linear interpolation. Here, it may be necessary to coordinate the movement with a central processor. NetMotion provides a wide range of single board or modular level controllers for these types of operations.