DLSPAG0129 - Supply of Motion Controllers

The scope of the contract is to design, manufacture, supply and delivery a high density, highly flexible, ideally integrated Motion Controller and amplifier solution. It must be capable of providing control for a multitude of different types of Stepper, Servo, Voice Coil and Piezo motors and therefore interface to suitable encoders to facilitate closed loop control. The target solution drives a block of 8 motion axes from a single compact, rack-mounted unit, or many motors if distributed. For the purpose of this tender document, it can be assumed that 70% of the axes under control will be stepper motors, 10% servo motors and the remaining 20% external amplifier driven devices. Of these axes 80% can be considered to require either synchronisation with other axes on the same (highly desirable) or separate controller and or potentially operate with Kinematic routines. The motion controller should either be housed within the amplifier units or be a separate card to be located within a suitable modular style system attached by 1 or 2 cables to the drive amplifier unit. For an integrated amplifier and controller, the interface to our control and data acquisition system (EPICS) will be an Ethernet interface. The system could take the form of a standard off the shelf-offering or 'a special' in a suitable enclosure with back panel connectors. If this approach is taken it must conform to DLS Electrical and connector standards. For this reason, it is anticipated that solutions that compromise a standard system modified in some way to meet the DLS connector standard will be given an advantageous cost weighting to compensate for the extra cost of packaging and connectors. The motion controller should be fully supported within the EPICS software framework.